Thursday's Throwback

I love history.

In university, I studied Medieval England, including the entire British isles and parts of France, as well as Latin America. But the history that I find myself recently infatuated with is my home city of Ottawa.

I have visited the Web site, Ottawa Past & Present, and I have spent hours looking at photographs of old locations, how they looked decades, even more than a century, ago, compared with how the same spot looks now.

I have to say, there are places in Ottawa that have lost their charm today, such as along the south side of Wellington Street, between Metcalfe and Lyon streets. The quaint shops have been replaced by cold, concrete and glass buildings. Though the cenotaph of the War Memorial is beautiful, I'm intrigued by how Sparks Street once extended beyond Elgin Street, and how we have since lost our old post office and a charming hotel.

Of late, I have returned to these spots and I have photographed them as they stand (or lay open) today.

Here they are.

Rideau Street, at Sussex Dr., looking west

Union Station

The trolleys at Union Station

The back of Union Station, along the Rideau Canal

The Sunnyside branch of the Ottawa Public Library

My thanks to the National Archives for some of these photos. All of them were obtained through a Google image search.

I plan to continue finding old photos and photographing how the locations look today. When time permits, I'll share them.

I love this city.