New residents are increasingly choosing to demolish old houses – some even older than Confederation itself – in Kitchissippi neighbourhoods. According to an analysis of Ottawa census data from 2011 (the last census taken before the Conservative government eliminated the mandatory long-form census), the oldest private dwellings (from 1960 or earlier) in Ottawa are concentrated in the Kitchissippi ward.
Coun. Jeff Leiper of the Kitchissippi ward said that the oldest houses in the area are older than Confederation.
Leiper said the houses are likely gathered in his ward because the area was much less affected by the fires that occurred in Ottawa in previous years.
The old houses, he said, are often seen as too much work to fix up or not big enough for the newer buyers in the neighbourhoods, so they are rarely interested even trying to renovate them. Few houses, such as the one below, end up being restored.

“There’s a real tension there,” he said. “The charm of the neighbourhood certainly comes from its older houses … but there’s definitely a trend towards taking those houses down.”
Leiper said areas in the ward such as Hintonburg, Westboro, Wellington Village and Champlain Park are progressively seeing older houses being torn down, with much larger houses replacing them.

The community associations in the ward, he added, often meet with infill developers to talk about their desire in keeping the old houses, “but unfortunately at this point, it really is market-driven.”
Kacey Cryan, the owner-operator of the Student Works painting division for Westboro, said the new buyers who do choose to renovate often try to preserve the interiors of their houses, as part of owning one of these houses is having an antique feel to them.
“They may knock down some walls or change the overall layout of the house, but the actual, say, moldings around the door or the doors themselves, they’re left intact because that antique look is sometimes fashionable.”
He added, however, that homeowners can find continual maintenance of antique parts or finishes too tedious, time-consuming or expensive – especially those of the exteriors.
Since much more wood was used to build houses in earlier years, Cryan said the exteriors often rot to such an extent that owners cannot afford to restore it, or the cost of restoration can exceed that of rebuilding.
“I found that houses that were really old had a bigger property … they would tear down the old house and build three houses on the one property,” Cryan said.
“They’re building up – so instead of two floors really widespread, it’s three floors, but they’re really skinny.”
Leiper also said that the biggest trend he has seen is an old home being torn down, and two semi-detached homes are being built in its place.
“Both those semi-detached homes are, by and large, as large as or larger than the house that they replace.”
Leiper noted that each of those semi-detached homes tend to sell for about $800,000 to $1.2 million, which many people who bought their homes in, say, the early 90s, cannot necessarily afford today.
“We’re just sitting on properties that, because of big, broad shifts in North America, have become very valuable land.”
Christiane Campbell, a Westboro resident whose family bought their home in 2002, said the poor condition of their nearly hundred-year-old home made the house more affordable to them.
After the first three years, their house went through an extensive, year-long period of renovation. It included changing the layout of the first floor, waterproofing and insulation.
“We essentially gutted it in stages. The result is a completely changed house – the only remains are the staircase and the main structure of the second floor.”
Campbell said the family wasn’t interested in knocking it down, and was largely able to afford the renovation by doing the work in stages.
They wanted to keep the “cottage-y kind of look” of the exterior, and appreciated its quaint style, which she said isn’t being built anymore.
“It’s a shame if every old house that changes hands winds up as some big, modern structure. I think it’s nice to have a mixture, and to keep some of that older character.”

Youth voters came out in droves this federal election, helped in part by an Elections Canada pilot project that offered students the choice to vote on-campus at special stations.

“In four days more than 70,000 students voted across the country. That’s not even counting the folks that came out for the advance voting days or for October 19^th,” said Gabrielle Ross-Marquette, the national executive representative for the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).

In Ottawa, there were five locations offered — two at the University of Ottawa, which is in the Rideau-Vanier municipal ward and three at Carleton University, located in Capital ward. From October 5^th to 8^th students cast their votes at these special stations.

According to an analysis of the 2011 National Household Survey, the highest concentration of primary household maintainers (the person responsible for rent and utilities) under the age of 25 years old live in the wards Rideau-Vanier, Somerset, and Capital.

These wards have large student populations, such as the neighbourhood of Sandy Hill, right beside Ottawa University. Although many students might not live on campus, they still spend a large chunk of their time there. Setting up on-campus voting stations helped encourage youth voter turnout.

“They would let students vote for their home riding or the riding in which they resided in right now,” said Ross-Marquette.

A student from Nova Scotia, for example, could show up to Carleton University campus and cast a vote for a candidate in their home riding.

In some cases, being able to choose whether to vote for your home riding or your current riding gave students the power to vote strategically by casting their vote in the riding where they thought it might make the most impact.

CFS did campus outreach to make sure students were aware that they had the option to vote at these special stations. This was how Deanne Pittman, a Master of Journalism student at Carleton University, found out about it.

“There were only a few students in line at the time so I decided that it would be much quicker to vote there than to vote on election day,” said Deanne Pittman.

The on-campus voting stations made the voting process much simpler and more accessible to students. Elections Canada was on hand to answer questions and tell youth exactly what they needed to do to be able to vote.

“I definitely think it should be expanded to other campuses. Students are very busy and have unpredictable schedules, so in my opinion, there is no downside to offering people more opportunities to vote,” said Pittman.

For Tamar Harris, an undergraduate journalism student at Carleton University, this was her first time voting. She was impressed by how quickly the process went after having read on Twitter about hour-long waits at advance voting stations.

“But I got there, showed them my id, and I was out in literally two minutes,” said Harris. “It might have actually been a deciding factor for some students who were bit more weary of voting and didn’t feel particularly driven to vote when they have to go ten or twenty minutes to a station.”

Youth voters played a key role in this election. Throughout the election CFS worked to arm students with information about issues such as increasing tuition rates and the decline of stable jobs and paid internships so they could be more informed when researching and questioning their riding candidates.

Harris attended a candidate debate held at Carleton University and said she liked the way that Catherine McKenna, the Liberal candidate, spoke to students beforehand about what issues interested them. She said she felt that the Conservatives didn’t do a good job of appealing to younger voters.

“I think it’s important to vote because there is no way that politics doesn’t affect your life, especially as a younger person,” said Harris.

Elections Canada will review the pilot project to see if it can be implemented on a larger scale for future elections.

Robert Taylor and his team are ready to welcome their Syrian refugee family.

They found a suitable apartment for the family of six, free dental checkups, and even some counselling services if needed.

Taylor is part of the Ottawa South Committee for Refugee Sponsorship, a group of a few dozen citizens rallied together to provide for the newcomers for a year.

They are not alone. Community groups and family members are sponsoring a total of 157 Syrian refugees in Ottawa. Mayor Jim Watson said last month the city will bring in between 800 and 2,000 refugees in total, a staggering addition to the 370 Syrians already living in Ottawa, according to the 2011 National Household Survey.

 

Number of Syrians per ward

 

To be eligible to sponsor a refugee family, a sponsor group must be able to provide shelter and assistance for one year, among others. Interpreting services are also recommended, as not all Syrians can speak English and French.

List of responsibilities for refugee sponsors.

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada

That’s why Taylor’s group is turning to Arabic-speaking communities to help them welcome the family.

“There isn’t a particularly big Syrian community but there is a large Lebanese community,” he says. “So we’re hoping there may be job opportunities that arise within the Arabic-speaking community.”

Taylor wouldn’t disclose the location of the apartment his committee found out of privacy concerns but he assures there will be linguistic support.

“They will be settled in an area that has a lot of positive Muslim support,” he says.

Laurie Fraser manages the language instruction programs at the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization (OCISO.) Being resettled in an Arabic-speaking neighbourhood is a must for newcomers who may not fully grasp English or French, she says.

“An Arabic-speaking community is important especially in the beginning to feel at home, to build connections (babysitters, advice, help, friendship),” she said in an email.

However, keeping exclusively to an Arabic-speaking neighbourhood isn’t going to benefit them in the long run, she says.

“English or French are needed in order to integrate, work, make Canadian friends,” she says. “You can’t remain in that ex-pat milieu for long or it will become isolating, insulated, even negative (bitter about all kinds of new and difficult things.)”

Most Arabic-speaking households are located in the eastern and southern wards, an analysis of the 2011 National Household Survey shows. The Gloucester-Southgate ward has the highest number of Arabic speakers per capita with 14,726 arabophones per 100,000 people.

 

Rate of Arabic speakers per ward

Living with neighbours that speak the same language would be an undeniable advantage for the Syrian refugees, says Luisa Veronis, a University of Ottawa professor specializing in immigration.

“It’s not like in the United States where immigrants form ‘ghettos’,” she says. “There will be increased job opportunities and they’ll establish a network faster.”

But staying in those communities might be difficult when the sponsorship program ends after a year because they’re typically living in affordable housing neighbourhoods, she says.

Syrian refugees will not get bumped up the waiting list for affordable housing, said Immigration Minister John McCallum during a news conference Wednesday.

“Canadians want to welcome these people coming from the scourge of civil war to our country, make them feel comfortable,” he said. “But at the same time, we don’t want to put them in a privileged position relative to other Canadians who are themselves working hard to find housing, to become citizens and so on.”

The first planes of refugees are set to arrive in Canada this week. Taylor hopes their family will be in that contingent.

“We’re ready! Well, we won’t know until we see them, but we sure hope so!”

 

The only difference between predicting political moves and cold weather fronts is that you can see evidence for the former earlier in advance. In the aftermath of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals handily winning the federal election, a strong emphasis was put on preserving the environment. First, there was the appointing of Catherine McKenna as minister of climate change and the environment. Then came the first minsters’ meeting that revolved around climate change. Finally, there is the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, in which Canada allegedly has been pushing for incredibly high emission reduction goals.

In Ottawa, the pressure for a revamped policy on the environment has been evident. The aforementioned McKenna is the Member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre, while thousands of Ottawans participated in a climate march that coincided with the Paris conference. It’s no secret that there is a push for Ottawa to become a ‘greener’ city. Vancouver, lauded in Canada for the way it has reduced greenhouse gas emissions and revamped transit, is an obvious example.

One of the hallmarks of Vancouver’s status as a green city has been the proliferation of its bike lanes, and it’s easy to see how similar infrastructure could be foisted on Ottawa. That claim could even be supported by data, as, in the 2011 National Household Survey, only 2045 fewer people said that they used the bicycle as their primary mode of transport in Ottawa as their Vancouver counterparts.

Report-North-America-Environment (PDF)

This would be misleading, however, as only four municipal wards in Ottawa had more than a thousand people list cycling as their main way of transportation, and all four are in or near downtown Ottawa. “Ottawa is a big cycling town, and the Canal is a great route. But as soon as you start to hit the outskirts of the town, you don’t find anyone biking,” said Cody MacKay, a resident of Heron Gate, part of the Alta Vista ward, which had 745 people report as full-time cyclists. MacKay drives the commute everyday to Carleton University where he’s a student.

Even those who live in the Somerset or Capital wards have an obstacle facing them if they choose to cycle: the weather. While the weather in Vancouver barely gets into negative degrees even in the winter, the same can’t be said for Ottawa and many bikes are put into storage come October. “It’s an amazing place to cycle, but it’s so hard to do when winter hits, because there’s all this extra gear you need,” says Elaine Feldman, a former federal servant living in Old Ottawa East. Feldman still bikes whenever she can but admits to putting away her green town bike at the first sight of snow or freezing rain.

Some would like to see the government pursue more lanes and advocate for more cycling, even in the winter. Feldman’s husband Andrew is an avid, everyday cycler, no matter the weather. It’s about a four-kilometre trip from their house to the Lester B. Pearson building where he works as a senior policy advisor for the Department of Global Affairs. He pushes the notion that you’re only as good as the clothes you wear: “I always say there’s no such thing as bad weather, just under-dressed people. So yeah, when it’s really cold, I go out in my balaclava.” He can’t resist a shot at the outgoing Conservative government. “Some might call it a ‘barbaric cultural practice.’”

By Amy Thatcher

A large number of people in Canada’s capital are living in over-crowded homes deemed “unsuitable”, according to National Household Survey (NHS) data from 2011.

Over 20,000 homes are classified as being unsuitable in the City of Ottawa, meaning they don’t have enough bedrooms for the number of people and size of the space, according to NHS guidelines.

And certain wards—Alta Vista, River and Bay in particular—have more overcrowding than others. West Carleton and Osgoode wards have the lowest numbers of unsuitable homes.

(http://arcg.is/1OUacCX)

The definition of suitable housing used by the NHS is derived from part of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) definition, which takes into account three aspects: affordability, adequacy (physical condition), and suitability (overcrowding).

“The NHS definition in particular has to do with the element of overcrowding, where people are trying to stretch their housing dollars,” says Fran Klodawsky, a Carleton University professor specializing in affordable housing.

Suitability is further defined by CMHC’s National Occupancy Standard requirements, which specify that houses must have at least one bedroom per adult couple, per person over the age of 18, per same-sex pair of children under the age of 18, and per additional child.

“More crowding in the Alta Vista, River and Bay wards could be a function of more apartments with lower income families crowded in,” says Steve Pomeroy, an urban planning consultant in Ottawa. “It could be as simple as a kid sharing a room with mum, or with a sibling of the opposite sex.”

He also indicated that these wards increasingly house larger minority families which may have different cultural norms than those we have adopted, and they may not consider sharing rooms inappropriate.

“Oftentimes, multi-generational families live under the same roof,” he says. “Grandparents live with their children and their grandchildren, sometimes even aunts uncles and cousins.”

Alta Vista River and Bay wards also have a disproportionately higher number of social housing units, according to Pomeroy.

While regulations do exist to combat overcrowding in subsidized social housing in Ottawa, the City’s suitability guidelines are based on square feet per person—not on the number of rooms.

Trudy Sutton, executive director of Ottawa’s Housing Help says that housing is deemed suitable if it has 100 square feet of bedroom space per person.

“This doesn’t necessarily line up with the NHS guidelines governing suitability,” she says. “Suitability depends on your definition.”

So, housing that is classified as unsuitable in the NHS may pass the City’s regulations. This means the amount of unsuitable housing in Ottawa could be much lower than data suggests.

Klodawsky confronted this discrepancy in definitions, asking—who decides what’s deemed unsuitable?

“There are tradeoffs, having just boys versus boys and girls versus having three kids in a room doesn’t always matter,” says Klodawsky. “If it means the parents are not as far away from their work than if they were living in the boonies, then maybe it’s reasonable.”

While regulations do exist to prevent overcrowding, the issue is not enforced regularly by City of Ottawa bylaw. Klodawsky says housing enforcement is mostly around major physical repair rather than the number of people per residence.

She says this could be because crowding is not necessarily a safety issue. Sutton did say however, that overcrowding is something that can affect one’s health.

“If you’ve got a bunch of siblings and mom and dad in a very limited number of rooms, it can affect sleep and the general health of everyone.”

A CMHC overview of housing suitability in Canada, based on 2011 National Household Survey data:

 

By: Craig Lord

Ottawa is falling short of expectations when it comes to providing suitable and affordable housing for its lowest-income citizens, experts say.

According to the 2011 National Household Survey, the five wards with the lowest median income are also among the six wards with highest instances of unsuitable housing per 1000 households. In other words, the lowest income residents are also most likely to experience unsuitable housing conditions.

Number of Unsuitable Homes per 1000 Homes, by Ward in Ottawa:

For a residence to be classified as unsuitable, according to Statistics Canada, means that the dwelling has enough bedrooms to fit the family living in it. Unsuitable homes may have children, parents, or even grandparents sharing bedrooms on a permanent basis.

“For a certain subset of the population, there’s a real difficulty in being able to find something that meets their needs,” says Noah Zon, a project lead with the Mowat Centre. Zon wrote a report in May of 2015 outlining Canada’s needs when it comes to affordable housing.

“There hasn’t been a lot of investment in new, purpose-built, rental buildings in Canada,” Zon says.

In September 2013, Ottawa city council embarked on a ten-year plan for housing in the Capital. It included approval for 130 new affordable housing units from 2013 to 2015 through the Ontario provincial Investing in Affordable Housing (IAH) Program. Affordable housing are units owned or subsidized by the city which offer rent reduced from market price for tenants, usually tied a household’s lower income.

Construction of additional units past 2015 has yet to be established, but that’s not the main concern for Steve Pomeroy, an urban planning consultant and associated researcher at Carleton University’s Centre for Urban Research and Education (CURE).

“There has been a preoccupation with ‘we need to be building affordable housing,’” Pomeroy says, noting that building affordable housing units is an expensive operation in itself.

In assessing the city’s response to its residents’ housing needs in recent years, Pomeroy offers a grade of “C+” – less than satisfactory.

“I think that it can spend smarter,” he says. Pomeroy suggests more direct support to lower-income families to facilitate renting affordable houses.

Just how big is the need for affordable options in Ottawa? In 2006, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), a crown corporation tasked with housing issues in the country, said that 40,760 households were in “core housing need.”

Core housing need is composed of three metrics: whether a house is in adequate repair, whether a house is suitable (proper capacity for the household), and whether it’s affordable for the household. Affordability is determined by whether or not a household is putting more than 30 per cent of its income before taxes into housing payments.

The CMHC has not released numbers for 2011, given that variation between the National Household Survey and long-form census make comparisons difficult.

According to a report prepared before the establishment of Ottawa’s ten-year plan, at the start of 2013, 9,717 households were on a waiting list for a spot in Ottawa’s social housing.

Housing Needs in Ottawa, an Overview – City of Ottawa

Zon says that families waiting for suitable housing are subjected to difficult living conditions. “When a household is either in inadequate, or unsafe, or they’re spending a significant amount of their income on shelter, it has widespread impacts on other aspects of their lives,” he says, noting that inadequate housing can affect healthcare outcomes and children’s schoolwork. “If you’re spending more on your housing, you can’t invest as much in your own well-being.” According to Zon’s report on affordable housing across Canada, 1 in 7 households are currently unable to afford adequate housing without spending more than 30 per cent of their income.

Access to Affordable Housing – Mowat Centre

The charm of old, quaint, historic neighbourhoods tends to captivate people. There’s something special about living in a home that has seen many different sets of feet passing through its threshold generation upon generation.

In Ottawa, Kitchissippi ward is where this appeal seems to be the strongest – with the highest number of people living in homes built in the 1960’s or before – according to an analysis of 2011 National Household Survey data.

Dave Allston thrives off of this special fact. He’s a local history buff that began doing what he calls “house histories” during high school back in the 90s. He would trace down who the builder was, when the house was built, and chronicle who had lived in it.

Allston began by looking into his own home in Kitchissippi, which has been in his family for six generations.

“Last year we had someone over; he was a baby when the house was built in 1927. He came and saw the house his parents had bought. It was awesome to have him in the house and connect that ninety-year difference,” he said.

When people became interested in his work, Allston began a business out of putting together house histories for homeowners. Sometimes he would even come across eerie murder or suicide histories.

“People find it really neat … I’d warn them, but they’d say ‘tell me everything!’ There’d be a newspaper article with a picture of a body being carried out the front steps and they’d frame it up!” he laughed.

House histories took Allston thirty to forty hours each to complete, but he said he “could

never charge enough to make it worthwhile, and nor did I want to charge too much.”

As of this past January, Allston shifted to publishing two to three stories a week on his blog called the Kitchissippi Museum. He also writes history columns for Kitchissippi’s local paper.

But unfortunately, the ward may start running low on historic houses for Allston to dig his teeth into, with more of what he calls “modern boxes” popping up.

“I’m part of our community association here and we get alerts on when they’re putting up permits to demolish. There’s a couple every week that are going up,” said Allston.

In fact, according to City of Ottawa Construction, Demolition, and Pool Enclosure permit data, Kitchissippi has seen the
greatest number of demolitions out of any other ward in the city: 362 since January of 2011.

“I pray for my heart every time I see a house get torn down,” said Allston.

He said the biggest problem for Kitchissippi is that people come for its “cozyness and quaintness,” but most have no problem paying for modern developments, so there’s a significant amount of money to be made in the area.

“Some people purchase homes in the area just to tear it down. They put up a double, sell each unit for $800 [thousand], and then take off with their half a million dollars in profit … They don’t care about the neighbourhood and what they’re doing to it,” said Allston.

Kitchissippi ward councillor Jeff Leiper said the loss of older homes is due to the city’s process of intensification and gentrification. Leiper said that in order to save old structures by designating them as heritage properties, the Ontario Heritage Act “sets a high bar.”

The Ontario Municipal Board recently approved a controversial 12-storey development on the corner of Island Park and Richmond/Wellington, which will demolish the oldest house on Wellington Street

According to Leiper, the house, while dating back to the 1890’s, was not worthy of protection simply because under the act, it did not meet the requirements.

Leiper said he hopes that during his term, he can work towards a “heritage overlay” – a protection of an entire neighbourhood – of Wellington Village, which he believes as a whole to be worthy.

As for Allston, he can rest assured that at least the oldest home in Kitchissippi – a stone house built by a Scottish farmer in 1828 – is still standing on Fuller Street, near Fairmont and Sherwood.

“There was many times where it was going to be torn down, but they’ve kept it up,” he said. “It’s got heritage status now and it’s in good shape so I think it can still last for a long time.”

In Rideau-Vanier some residents spend more of their household income on shelter costs than in any other ward, according to data from Statistics Canada.

The 2011 National Household Survey shows 6,305 respondents in the ward spend between 30 to less than 100 per cent of their total household income on rent or a mortgage. The Somerset ward to the west of Rideau-Vanier also recorded high numbers, coming in second with 5,540 respondents.  The lowest number was from the rural ward of Osgoode, with 995 respondents.

Experts say rent or a mortgage should not exceed more than 30 per cent of total household income otherwise people will be at risk of financial hardship.

“It’s an affordability issue,” says Laurie Campbell, chief executive officer of Credit Canada Debt Solutions, a non-profit credit counselling service. “If you put more than 30 per cent of your income towards housing costs, it really doesn’t free up a lot of money for other costs.”

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation which insures mortgages, recommends the slightly less conservative figure of 32 per cent for housing costs.

One such Ottawa resident having trouble sticking to that 32 per cent figure is Jocelyn Brock.  She says rent in the downtown ward of Somerset is very expensive and almost all her paycheque goes to basic living costs.

“I’m lucky enough to have paid off all my school debt, but it makes me anxious to live paycheque to paycheque,” she says. “Additional costs like internet, phone and food…it adds up and takes nearly all my paycheque.”

Brock has worked short-term contracts for the federal government since graduating from Algonquin College last year. She says the contracts don’t pay very well and offer no guarantee of future employment.  This makes it hard to plan for the future, which worries her, she says.

“There’s no forward plan, no forward thinking,” she says. “You can’t anticipate where you’ll be.”

Better jobs and better incomes, this is one solution to the city’s affordable housing problem says Mathieu Fleury, city councillor for Rideau-Vanier.

“Income. Overall income.  We need to make sure people make a better income and make more money and stay in the middle class…then they’ll be able to have adequate housing,” he says.

Together with the need for better jobs for the ward, Fleury adds Rideau-Vanier’s demographics are also a likely contributor to the ward’s affordable housing issues.

“It’s because historically there’s been a lot of Ottawa community housing units, the student population and because of the rental market overall in our area,” he says. “Those are all factors explaining why housing comes at a prime in the area and is costing a lot of money for our residents.”

Lorraine Bentley agrees with Fleury’s assessment. She is the executive director of Options Bytown, an agency which provides permanent housing for vulnerable people like the homeless and the mentally ill.

She says people tend to think of Ottawa as a stable and affluent government town. The truth is Ottawa does have a substantial population of people who are of low income, including the working poor and the homeless, she says.

She says one solution is a national housing strategy—a federally co-ordinated plan to get more affordable housing units built.

“Canada up until 1992 did have a national housing strategy and affordable housing was being built all across the country,” she says. “Now it’s more provincial.  Quebec has continued to build affordable housing.”

She says she doesn’t like to use the term ‘crisis’ to describe the current housing situation in Ottawa—instead, she asks: “if you didn’t have a home, wouldn’t you feel you [were] in crisis?”

The Alta Vista and Bay wards in Ottawa were the biggest magnets for new immigrants between 2006 and 2011, according to an analysis of Statistics Canada data.

The results from the 2011 National Household Survey, which replaced Canada’s long-form census, show that 3010 immigrants settled in Alta Vista, located in Ottawa’s south end, and 3005 in Bay — located west of the city’s downtown core — in that time frame.

The next two most popular wards were Gloucester-Southgate and River — both in Ottawa’s south end — which each absorbed 2725 and 2660 immigrants, respectively, between 2006 and 2011.

Social and subsidized housing has a lot to do with the distribution and concentration of immigrant populations in Ottawa, according to Riley Brockington, who is the councillor for River ward. Brockington, who sits on the city’s planning committee, said the largest number of social housing units available in the city are situated in the Bay and River wards, respectively, which can help explain their large intake of immigrants.

While Ottawa welcomes immigrants from a range of socio-economic backgrounds, Brockington said a large portion of newcomers to Canada arrive with very little. Therefore, Ottawa Community Housing units in his ward — like the towers at 1485 Caldwell Ave. in Carlington — are often their starting point.

“If you are money-strapped… you’ve just basically arrived and you need help being placed, then you’ll go where housing is available,” he said.

A report published by Citizenship and Immigration Canada in April 2005 based on 2001 census data noted that only one in five households consisting of immigrants who settled in Ottawa on or after Jan. 1, 1996 owns its home — compared to three in five Canadian-born households.

Map of where immigrants lived in Ottawa from 2006 to 2011

Brockington said larger subsidized housing complexes also have a “family house” which provides medical and social services to residents, which is an advantage and might explain why immigrant families choose urban over rural wards. One example is the Debra Dynes Family Home, located east of Mooney’s Bay.

“[The family homes] are like one-stop shops,” he said. “The rural wards might have the odd home or half-way house where some people go to, but not in any quantity that you see in the older urban wards.”

Neither Jean Cloutier or Mark Taylor, the councillors for Alta Vista and Bay, responded to interview requests.

The City of Ottawa also designed some communities with low-income immigrants and residents in mind. Don Paice — a retired pharmacist who has lived in the Gloucester-Southgate neighbourhood of Hunt Club since the late 1970s — said Hunt Club was structured to integrate low-cost housing and co-ops, which subsequently brought a lot of immigrants and ethnic minorities into the area.

“It was interesting at that time because it wasn’t the norm in the 1970s and the 1980s and you definitely didn’t find communities as mixed as this community was at that time,” Paice said.

Residents of these four wards — which together also had the four largest immigrant populations in Ottawa in 2001 — are now reaching out to help with the Syrian refugee crisis, citing their appreciation for living in an ethnically diverse community.

Paice and his wife Elaine are spearheading a group sponsorship of a Syrian refugee family.

“I don’t think people don’t take the time to think about how these refugees will contribute to the economy [and] to the community culturally,” he said. “They help the community grow and they help the community develop.”

Kris Nanda, who is the president of the Riverview Park Community Association in Alta Vista, said five community associations, including his own, have been working together to fundraise for United Way Ottawa’s refugee initiative.

“I think overall people are concerned about the plight of the refugees and my sense is there’s a desire to welcome them and help them integrate,” Nanda said.

 

OTTAWA— Two years ago, Kreg Saunders moved to Ottawa’s Rideau-Goulbourn ward. Raised in Huntsville—which is about four hours from Ottawa and has a population just over 19,000 people—Saunders admitted he didn’t really understand the whole French-English debate in Ottawa, because to him it had never been an issue.

“We used to play French fries and English muffins in the schoolyard, at recess,” said Saunders.

“We listened to Roch Voisine to learn our verbs. But apart from that? No one really cared about French.”

According to an analysis of data retrieved from the federal government’s 2011 Census, only five houses reported speaking both official languages at home in the Rideau-Goulbourn ward; making it the least bilingual ward in Ottawa.

It also had the least amount of French speakers overall, with 1.6 per cent of the ward reporting to speak French.

Jean-Pierre Corbeil is the chief specialist in the Language Statistics Section at Statistics Canada. He said the results are not surprising, because most bilingual speakers in Ottawa tend end to live in the more Eastern parts of the city.

Corbeil said two things that affect a person’s bilingual proficiency are education and practice.

For an interactive version of the following map below please click the image below.

Rideau-Goulbourn has the lowest number of bilingual (English/French) speakers in Ottawa. Photo Screenshot ©ArcGis.

 

The ‘privilege’ of being bilingual

Corbeil said the search for French immersion programs is on the rise, not only in Ottawa, but in Canada as a whole. He explained that while people who got into these programs tended to come from households with a higher socio-economic status, it was not fair to say that bilingualism was reserved for the “elite.”

“We need to watch out by saying that people who want to learn French are privileged, because it’s not necessarily true.”

Gloucester-Southgate is one of Ottawa’s poorest wards and also has the most bilingualism, according to the most recent census data.

While only seven per cent of people living in the ward marked French as their first language, their neighbours in Cumberland and Innes have the largest proportion of French speakers in Ottawa—where 29.36 and 24.38 per cent of the populations spoke French, respectively.

Corbeil said this could be because people who live in communities that speak another language are also more prone to picking up the language faster, because they hear and are able to practice the language.

This is also true, said Corbeil, of people working in the public sector or who need to interact with people in both languages on a daily basis.

Officially, Ottawa is not a bilingual city, though it does try to accommodate people who speak both languages. But according to Corbeil there is a strong push developing among some groups to make it so in the near future.

University of Ottawa Political Science professor John Trent is among those who want the city to be bilingual. Trent said, because Ottawa is the capital of Canada, a country that prides itself on multiculturalism and on having two official languages, it should be able to service its residents in both English and French.

Trent learnt how to speak French as an adult. “I was given the ‘privilege’ of learning French. But at a certain point, I needed to make a choice,” said Trent.

Saunders said he would like to see more initiative from the government.

“I think if the government isn’t going to take bilingualism seriously they should just get rid of it. If they don’t even care, how the (sic.) heck, are you going to get other people to care?”

Saunders said he actually went to a French immersion school from grades one to nine. He works in construction and says he often has the opportunity to speak French, but chooses not to.

Bilingualism—what is it?

To Saunders being bilingual means to be able to express himself in two languages, without stuttering or hesitation. Saunders said he hesitated to speak to people at work, because he was embarrassed by his accent.

“I try to practice my French with them, but then they switch to English, because I guess they want to try and practice their English with me,” said Saunders, with a laugh.

Corbeil said that, in general, French speakers tend to be more bilingual than Anglophones, because English communities surround them, and they want to integrate.

“Of course, I appreciate French. I actually wish I was fluent,” said Saunders. “But English is the language of the world!”

McGill University Social Psychology professor Donald Taylor said English was a “pervasive language,” that dominates not only in Canada, but as Saunders would agree, the world.

Taylor said one reason Anglophones may be more resilient to learning French, is because of the cultural threat that it poses on an individual’s own situation.

“You go to immersion school. You learn to speak another language, say French. Now you discover that when applying to any national organization or private group, you’ve got an advantage on anyone else who doesn’t speak the language,” he continued.

In Ottawa, Francophones made more money on average, than other groups, in 2011. 

“It’s all about the threat that it poses on them, the threat it poses to their family and their own ability to succeed.”

“It’s funny that it’s now 2015, we are less than 1 and a half years away from celebrating 150 years of Canada and Ottawa, our capital, is not even a bilingual city,” said Corbeil.

“It’s not just learning a new language, but opening yourself up to a new culture; a culture that happens to contribute to the make-up of our country.”