By Gillian Magnan, Citizen Special
A modest house sits back from a historic New Edinburgh street, quietly holding stories of some of Ottawa's earliest immigrants within its walls. The 123-year-old home at 101 Stanley Ave. has also been witness to a host of peculiar coincidences during its many years.
Now the home of a charming cosmopolitan couple, Emmanuelle Lamoureux and Sébastien Beaulieu, it's next on my list of houses with beguiling tales to unwind.
I always like to ask people what first drew them to their house. Your story is a little different than most.
We bought it without even visiting. We were posted in Paris with External Affairs and our term was coming to an end when we saw this house listed. We realized that the lady selling the house was the same one who taught our etiquette course, the one for Foreign Service officers leaving on overseas postings. The house looked good in the pictures. We thought we would like New Edinburgh since it was close to work. We made an offer that was accepted before we left France.
It's an appealing little house, gentle and quiet. I was quite happy to discover that you were presented with the history of the house when you bought it. It was built in 1887, so it has quite a pedigree.
The one we had was compiled in 1988 for one of our neighbours. We now have a very complete picture of the past and realize that this little house has a lot of energy stored in its walls.
It was all started by Thomas MacKay, the father of New Edinburgh, a hard-working idealist who set out to build a new world for fellow Scotsmen here on the east side of the Rideau River.
In a few short years, there were mills of all sorts, factories, breweries, churches and stores. This lot was first sold to a man named Neil MacCaul for $300 in 1874. He managed to get hold of a $1,000 mortgage with the Metropolitan Building & Saving Society almost immediately, but it took him 13 years to build the house.
It was always a rental property and between 1887 and 1902, it was home to a couple of butchers, a stableman, a horse trainer, some labourers, a painter and a chimney sweep named Johnny Mercer (not the songwriter). New Edinburgh was definitely a working-class area in those days.
One of the first families to live here were Norwegian immigrants. We're told that John
Bisgaard, his wife and six sons immigrated to Canada in 1878. Bisgaard was a machinist and worked at one of the local mills; John Jr. was a butcher and worked in the shop at 48 Crichton St.
Sebastien, you made a wonderful find that established a direct link with the Bisgaard family.
In the small bedroom upstairs, there was a little hole in the floor, maybe where a water pipe had once been. All crumpled up and stuffed in the hole, probably to keep the draft out, was a very fragile yellowed newspaper dating back to 1888, written, as we now realize, in Norwegian.
It was such a wonderful feeling to gently extract that delicate material, material that had been doing a very good job for 122 years and picture how it got to be in a little house on a little street in Canada. Perhaps the Bisgaards' family dishes were wrapped in this paper for the rough ocean crossing, or perhaps a friend was keeping them up to date with the happenings at home or John simply kept a copy for a souvenir. Your imagination can really take flight over such small matters.
I know the feeling. I gather there are all kinds of odd connections that have come to light?
It's all quite fascinating to us. A fellow by the name of Emile Joliat emigrated from Switzerland when he was 17 years old. He had a variety of jobs and joined the Ottawa Police Force in 1895 as a constable. He was an excellent police officer and was already a sergeant by the time he bought this house in 1902.
There was some luck involved. The Metropolitan Loan & Savings Company foreclosed on the original owner and Emile was able to get the house for only $800. He rose through the ranks and was appointed Ottawa's chief of police in 1931.
Emile Joliat was our first francophone chief, quite an important distinction, I think. He was an outstanding member of the Ottawa Police Athletic Association, and one of his specialties was bicycle racing. He was the first policeman in Ottawa to ride a bicycle in the execution of his duties. He probably rode his bike to work from here every day.
His portrait forms part of the huge mosaic mural inside the police station on Elgin Street. I wonder how many working officers know of Emile's most famous relationship.
That's a good story. Emile and Azilda had four children that we know of, they all lived in this house. The Mighty Atom, Aurel Joliat, was their eldest son. He made it big in hockey and played exclusively for the Montreal Canadiens from 1922 to 1938. Aurel was a small, fiery, exuberant force to be reckoned with. He won the Hart Trophy in 1934 and played on a line with Howie Morenz and Billy Boucher to win three Stanley Cups. He played at the same time as King Clancy, another famous Ottawa boy, who lived on Clarence Street.
We were very curious about Aurel and did a little research of our own. We have a photo of him in his Montreal Canadiens jersey. A lot of people ask if he is my grandfather when they see the picture.
I have to say that the resemblance is uncanny. I think we should take a picture of you in one of those jerseys; you're almost his double.
I agree, it is a bit weird but that's not the only odd coincidence. Aurel grew up on Stanley Avenue and won the Stanley Cup three times. One of the previous owners was the widow of a former ambassador to Paris. We are in the Foreign Service and were living in Paris when we bought this house.
Emile Joliat was born in Switzerland. We were posted to Switzerland when our daughter was born.
Our son's name is Emil; he was born before we knew any of this.
That sends a little shiver down the spine. You found another newspaper fragment in the basement that dates the first time an addition was added at the back.
That was a piece of The
Ottawa Journal dated December 6, 1918, that we found stuffed into the wall in the basement. The original footprint of the house was surprisingly small.
I guess Emile was making a good salary by that time and they needed a bit more space. The Joliats lived here most of the time Emile was police chief and when Aurel was playing with the Canadiens. It's fun to imagine him coming home for Christmas and going for a skate on the river or on the canal.
Emmanuelle, all these stories are fun and add so much to your sense of place. What do you especially like about your house?
I certainly love the area. It's like living in a village, not a city.
In the old days, it was a village of course. MacKay seemed to have had an almost Utopian concept, all residents of New Edinburgh had jobs within the village. There were stores, churches, a music hall and a ferry across to Gatineau, everything for a healthy happy life.
It still seems to have the same flavour, although not quite the convenience. I love the space for the children to play at the back, the openness across the park to the river, the lightness of it all.
I love the stories as well. It's exciting to be a part of the life of this house. Do we miss Paris? We truly loved living in Paris, but as a family with young children, the quality of life that we have been enjoying since moving to 101 Stanley is simply outstanding. This is exactly where we want to be right now.
Gillian Magnan is a regular contributor to Homes. If you have a story to share, please contact her at gsmagnan@sympatico.ca.
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