Sandy Smallwood Preserves Wallis House and Women’s Military History
November 11th in Ottawa is a day of ceremony aimed at remembering the men and women who have served during times of war, conflict and peace. For residents of Lowertown, Wallis House serves as a daily reminder of a military presence in the community that spanned more than fifty years. While its first 75 years were dedicated to health care, after decades with the Department of National Defence, the building itself was in need of serious healing.

Wallis House at the corner of Rideau and Charlotte streets, pictured here in the 1940s, was built in the mid-1870sEnter Sandy Smallwood and his company, Andrex Holdings. In 1994, Public Works put the building up for sale to the highest bidder. Smallwood’s first bid of $1 was rejected and Public Works decided to demolish. However, supported by community groups, Smallwood had a chance to make a second bid of $320,000 – approximately $100,000 more than the $203,000 paid by National Defence Naval Service in 1943.
He recalls that the original multi-year plan to sell the units in phases turned into pandemonium when the first units went up for sale. “By lunch, they had sold out the first phase, which we had expected to take a year,” he says. “By the end of the weekend the whole building was sold out.”

The Wrens at Wallis House During the early period of military ownership, Wallis House got its name from a War of 1812 naval hero, but undoubtedly some of the building’s most interesting naval memories relate to the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service recruits housed here from 1943 to1945. The Canadian Navy was the last service to admit women but by 1943 hundreds of members of the WRCNS were parading proudly through the nearby streets.
At Wallis House, inspections by Princess Alice, Honorary Commandant Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service, revealed some of the physical life of the Wrens quarters. She visited the galley, mess, refrigeration plant, stores and supply office, knitting stores, regulation office, recreation room, sickbay and upper deck to inspect the ratings’ cabins and dormitory.
The Wrens’ social life included weddings, corn and wiener roasts on the grounds, as well as charity events. Christmas 1943 witnessed a traditional ship’s concert enjoyed by 400 Wrens stationed in Ottawa and a Christmas Day dinner where officers served ratings in a gaily decorated mess hall. In August 1944, more than 500 Ottawa-based Wrens celebrated the second anniversary of their naval service with a church parade that started at Wallis House.
When the Second World War ended in August 1945, close to 7,000 women had served in the navy.
By September of that year, the Wrens at Wallis House were being demobilized and re-introduced to civilian lives. Fifty years later, some of these women were among the crowds eager to view the building as re-envisioned by Sandy Smallwood.
So let us remember the women of the WRCNS who served during the Second World War and who added their narrative to this building. But also, we can give thanks to the man who saved this magnificent building. Now home to 47 luxury, two-storey condominiums occupied by all kinds of residents – young and old, single and living with a partner – Wallis House is unique in many ways. As Sandy Smallwood says, historic buildings like this one have stories that cannot be replicated and the Wrens story at Wallis House is just one example.

Built between 1878 and 1888, the distinc­tive brick house on the southeast corner of St. Patrick and Cumberland housed one of the four businesses of this intersec­tion – a business at each corner. Although situated at the outer edge of the main commercial part of Lowertown, residents near this junction had everything within reach, from meat, groceries and liquor to painted signs.
Regrettably, this last of the original buildings that once stood at this cross­road is now facing the prospect of being surrounded by a proposed four-storey apartment development that would ex­tend along Cumberland, from Murray Street to St. Patrick Street.
Like many Lowertown corner build­ings, the house has already experienced physical changes and varied uses over its lifetime. The story of some of the oc­cupants and their enterprises reveals a little background on its evolution and the eventual acquisition of two addresses – 320 St. Patrick Street and 277 Cumber­land.

Kind-Edward to St-Patrick, looking westAdelaide Marenger, widow of Antoine, gets the credit for the first grocery store on this site, operating perhaps as early as 1861. She also built the double at 281-283 Cumberland as an investment property. After the death of her husband, Adelaide operated a grocery business at 320 St. Patrick from late 1870 up to late 1880, eventually with the assistance of her son, Adolphe and his family.
When Louis Renaud with his wife Eu­phemie St. Germain and infant daughter Validore arrived, the family continued the grocery for a few years. By 1888, they had established a flour and feed business be­hind the house, at 279 Cumberland Street. The house was big enough to accommo­date extended family members, and the flour and feed business was successful enough to require a clerk and a delivery person. Horses still ruled the roads and needed food, as did the chickens and pigs that people kept in their back yards. For people, flour in large quantities was needed to keep up the daily supply of bread.
In 1912, 320 St. Patrick was sold to Michel Ulric Valiquet, a physician who lived here for sev­eral decades with his wife Grace Har­ris and their five children. Newspaper stories about the family in­dicate that St. Brigid was their home parish and the children were educat­ed at nearby schools. During the First World War, Ul­ric served in Europe from 1915 to 1918 as part of the Canadian Army Medical Corps and was raised to the rank of Ma­jor. On his return to Ottawa, he worked at the Department of Pensions and at the time of his death in 1932, he was a medical adviser on the Board of Pension Commissioners and medical officer for the Princess Louise Dragoon Guards. His funeral service at St. Brigid’s included an honour guard of the Dragoons and band music by the Governor General’s Foot Guard.
Over the years, the building has adapt­ed to the needs of its owners. What start­ed as a combined home and grocery store on St. Patrick with an adjoining flour and feed business on Cumberland became a large residence and office for a physi­cian and his growing family. As a practic­ing physician, it is possible that Valiquet made changes to the building to have a discrete entrance for visits from patients.
By 1940, when Robert Beland pur­chased the building, he had a separate address at 277 Cumberland while 320 St. Patrick was converted to apartments, to meet housing needs generated by an in­flux of civil servants to Ottawa during WW II. Later, 277 Cumberland was also converted into two rental units. Happily, the building is now once again a single home for Alexandra and Armin Badzak.
As the neighbourhood evolved, there were many changes in its surroundings. One of the other long-term corner land­marks is St. Brigid’s, constructed in 1889 on the northwest corner to serve the local Irish and other English-speaking Catho­lics and now home to the St. Brigid’s Cen­tre for the Arts.

Pronounced HEEney, this street was laid out in early surveys but was not named until after the four cemeteries were closed. Early reminiscences talk about the heap of sand that remained there after the bodies had been taken out for burial elsewhere. City and private contractors apparently used the sand for road-making purposes.

John and Mary Ann Heney with children, 1879The street is named after John Heney (1821-1909), a man with a long association with Lowertown.
He was married in 1849 at Notre Dame on Sussex and attended the meeting convened to create St Brigid’s Parish in 1888. Over the decades, he built a reputation as a prominent local entrepreneur. On arrival in Bytown in 1844, he produced shoes and boots in the York Street workshop of the Protestant John Heney. By 1849, he had his own business, eventually with a shop and a house on Sussex Street. In 1868 he started supplying cordwood to heat the Parliament Buildings and built a company that supplied coal and then oil for furnaces up to the 1970s. No surprise that he became an alderman for the City of Ottawa in 1857 and served in this capacity until 1887

For some Lowertown residents, the tall apartment building at 160 Chapel will always be associated with an era of hippies and “sex & drugs &  rock & roll.” But when construction of the 22-storey cooperative college and residence was announced in 1969, it was promoted as a positive social and educational experiment.
Named after Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), a Swiss educational reformer whose motto was “Learning by head, hand and heart”, the college’s aim was to support development of all aspects of a person. The emphasis was on group learning through participation in activities that supported intellectual, moral and physical improvement. In addition to providing housing, the facility provided spaces for subject matter such as history, literature and philosophy as well as artistic activities including photography, dance, ceramics, video and music.

Pestalozzi College at Rideau and Chapel 1972 Russell MantEarly proposals indicated that the building was designed to promote an innovative and progressive internal community that related closely to the larger external Lowertown community. Spokespeople saw the possibility for the Pestalozzi model to act as a catalyst for change at a time when the surrounding community was undergoing urban renewal.
Commoners’ Publishing, which later produced the Lowertown short story written by Norman Levine, got its start at Pestalozzi College as a community- oriented organization for local poets, writers and photographer. Johanne McDuff, then working as a freelance photographer, later an award-winning journalist, used the college facilities to produce her photographs for the book.
Despite the lofty intentions, Pestalozzi fell quickly into financial distress and by 1979 was sold to a private realty company.