Lowertown lost and found: Cornering St. Patrick and Cumberland

Kind-Edward to St-Patrick, looking west

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. 

​

---

​Adelaide 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.