A description of the circumstances associated with Clarella Park is
described in Bruce Elliott's book The City Beyond, (page 194) and
reads as follows:
| "The Skead's Mills property between the CPR tracks and the river was
a popular spot for campers. However, in the spring of 1909 the CPR,
which owned the property, declined to rent to campers and circulated a
petition to annex it and the adjoining Summerland subdivision to Westboro
Police Village. (Westboro had become a police village in 1905 with
power to elect village boards of trustee to assess for streets and sidewalks
and to contract for services such as garbage and street lighting, subject
to the approval of Nepean Township Council.) Summerland had just
been laid out on the Magee property for J.E. Taggart and was being marketed
for him by Daniel O'Connor Jr as a "beautiful spot for cottages."
What was obviously in the wind was subdivision of the CPR property.
By including it within the police village, services would be supplied at
the cost of every resident of the village, not just hose who would buy
into the new tract. By annexing the new area, Westboro hoped to gain
a beach front. The annexation was approved by county bylaw on 19
June 1909.1
The railway sold the property to Manitoba Senator John N. Kirchoffer and it was developed for him by Ottawa realtor John Y. Caldwell.2 In the spring of 1910 Caldwell laid out the Clarella Park subdivision. Twenty-one lots sold the first week and the property was soon being built over with permanent homes, "all of them adhering to those construction and sanitary restrictions essential for the creation of a first class residential neighbourhood." Clarella was supplied with lights and telephones, and the owner supplied water from drilled wells and graded the streets as the houses went up. Caldwell advertised Clarella Park as "the coming Westmount of Ottawa."3 He made much of the fact that 800 feet of beach front was reserved for bathing and boating purposes. but in fact these were wedges of land too small for building. He also hyped the fact that the OIC Driveway went through the property, though in fact it did nothing of the kind. What is now Island Park Drive ended at the islands hundreds of yards to the east, and Caldwell merely laid out a winding river front street as a circuitous western extension of it, though never deeding it to the OIC. Nonetheless, within five years there were 57 houses in Clarella Park, only 10 of them cottages. Caldwell was too eager to sell lots to keep the property the exclusive residential enclave he advertised and indeed the property was not as ideally situated as he let on. All the houses were built in the interior part of the survey toward the CPR track, for the avenues closer to the river were low-lying and prone to flooding during the spring runoff."4
Notes
|
Clarella and Summerland plan
