Emma Cousins rented a 100-year-old home in August, and admits to being curious about the memories her Centretown residence holds.

“I love living in an older home,” she said. “It’s like buying a used book. It has more memories in it. You think about who lived here, who built the house, what did it look like before it was renovated.”

Cousins’ house is a solid brick, three-bedroom duplex standing on 273 Bronson Ave near the city’s downtown core. The interior has a narrow stairway that leads to a living room with a dangling chandelier, a ceiling  with faint renovation marks and an old-school fan.

Another stairway that Cousins described as having a “little turn at the bottom like an elbow,” leads to the attic where there are two rooms. The vent covers have intricate designs that are not common in more modern houses. These features remind Cousins that her house is old.

“Older homes tend to take more care on how little details look to make it more aesthetically appealing,” she said.

According to an analysis of Statistics Canada data from the 2011 National Household Survey, Cousins’s home is one of more than 2,000 residences scattered among the neighbourhoods in the Somerset ward that were built before 1960. The ward has the highest number of these old houses in Ottawa.

Number of pre-1960 residential houses in Ottawa by ward (click on the panel in the map to see the map’s legend)

Source: Statistics Canada, 2011 National Household Survey

“The city grew from inside out,” Robert Smythe, an urban historian said about the reason most of Ottawa’s oldest houses are in this part of the city.

He added that the downtown area was first to be partitioned into small building lots which were built upon by developers and contractors between the 1870s and 1900s.

In the northern half of the city, most of the old buildings  were demolished to create space for office buildings and parking lots, Smythe said. Even those buildings that survived have in some cases been transformed from single family dwellings to apartments.

But those that remain still hold a great appeal to people like Cousins.

“Today there is a premium on heritage, primarily because of their special character and central location,” Smythe said.

That special character inspired Jordan Sanders, an occupational psychologist from Vancouver, to buy a 68-year-old home in the Kitchissippi, the ward with almost 2,000 of these houses, the second highest in Ottawa.

“When you walk into some of the rooms, it has really clear archways,” Sanders said about his home. “It has a rustic sort of style to it that I appreciate.”

Sander’s house, a 2,800 square feet property, was built by two brothers who owned a construction business. The brothers built the house in 1948 after deciding they wanted to live together. However, it has seen a drastic facelift since it was built.

Despite their appeal, some of these houses are not without problems.

“Older homes are harder to heat if it wasn’t insulated properly,” Cousins said. “Our bedrooms are upstairs in the attic so it gets really hot in the summer and really cold in the winter. There’s a heater up there. I have to keep the heat on constantly to keep it at a decent temperature.”

“The floor slants down, it curves down in the middle so if you spill water it all runs into one spot and that’s such an older home thing,” she added.

The city encourages proper maintenance of these old houses, said local historian Smythe.

“Changes to houses in heritage districts are now regulated by the city’s heritage zoning and designation,” he said. “There are minor grants available to heritage properties, but their retention is largely dependent upon the dedication of their owners.”

(Click on the annotation to see the City of Ottawa article about how to identify and protect heritage properties)

Looking up from the narrow grip of her bicycle’s handlebar, Jennifer Dunlop struggles to see the stretch of paved road ahead of her. As she turns on the mounted head light installed between her hands, the visibility improves, but the brisk two-degree temperature remains bitter.

This mid-November morning, Dunlop has arrived at the end of her everyday route that leads her to Broadview Public School. Some commuters may think she’s out of her mind cycling in this weather, but Dunlop is more concerned with the parent-teacher interviews she will be hosting over the next three hours.

“Meh, I put lights on my bike and I was good to go,” shrugs Dunlop as she points to the front of her Norco VR3 Forma, a 27-speed hybrid bike that contrasts its surroundings with a light-blue paint job. “I find driving in traffic can be a major builder in stress. This way, I’m less stressed and have had a good start to my day.”

Since the prior evening, the parents of Dunlop’s fourth and fifth grade French-immersion students having been visiting her classroom, located within one of eight compact portables on Broadview’s playground. While they themselves didn’t bike to the interview, many of these parents, who live within Westboro’s close proximity to the school, reside in one of Ottawa’s most concentrated cycling commuter regions.

Please zoom and click the colour-coded regions to see their bike commuting concentrations.
Source: Statistics Canada: NHS Profile 2011

Dunlop, 33, has been managing on two wheels since April, the same month in which she and her husband sold their second car. During that time, she surveyed a personal list of reasons that could entail a possible transportation change, one of which included the near 30 children whose heads perk up when she talks about health and climate change.

“When teaching kids, you often realize what you’re doing wrong when you’re trying to teach them what to do right,” admits Dunlop. “It opens up your eyes about the consequences of your own actions and about how we need to do more in little ways.”

As her students often see, Dunlop’s commitment reflects that of the surrounding neighbourhoods. Every day around 3:30 p.m., as students exit the school doors, parents, young adults and post-secondary students pass by on their commute home. But with winter weather within sight, many of these cyclists will opt for a safer, warmer way of getting around.

Jamie Sauder, a co-worker of Dunlop’s who has chosen to cycle for nearly all of the past 26 years is one of these cyclists. He says that the tremendous upside of riding his bike is canceled out as soon as snowfall becomes consistent.

“I’ve had many winter-cycling accidents back in the day, none fatal, but it’s not something I’m looking to repeat,” explains Sauder, who will choose public transit for the five months if snowfall persists and recommends others to do the same. “The risk potential grows to an uncomfortable point.”

Sauder, a grade-five French-immersion teacher that cycles in from Aylmer, Que. every day, is an experienced leader among Broadview’s collective staff who travel by bike, a group that has steadily grown since Ottawa’s Bike to Work Month took place in May.

“It was good for people that needed that last push,” says Sauder, who admits to seeing more people like Dunlop make the commitment.

With a handful of snow-less days left, Dunlop says she isn’t quite ready to put away her bike and hopes to get as much out of it as possible.

“For me, my time, health and green footprint topped my list of reasons,” says Dunlop. “If it makes sense for other people, then there are plenty of reasons that they can care about and commit to.”

Source attribution: Information outside of interviews was primarily obtained from Statistics Canada’s 2011 Census and the City of Ottawa. Software from Google Maps, ArcGIS, QGIS and DocumentCloud were used to present the embedded visuals.

“I’m not really a big fan of the nine-to-five, I have a bit of a problem with confinements. I wanted flexibility, and I wanted to be around with my kids, and I knew that I was a very efficient worker, and I could do that from home.”

Lisa Georges lives in Kitchissippi, by the river in Ottawa. Twelve years ago, she decided the office just wasn’t the right place for her – her family was growing, and she needed the room to grow herself. When she asked her employers about the possibility of working at home, they told her no. “At the time it wasn’t really a thing, to have your employees work from home, and so they were like, I don’t think so.”

When her second child was born, the year of maternity leave gave her a chance to think. She took the opportunity to develop her own work up to the standard that she knew was necessary.

“I knew I had to work a certain amount of hours, and I needed a certain amount to sustain my current existence. So, that’s what I did.”

Using the clients that she had met in her previous office job, Lisa created her own publishing and marketing business at home. Her first big contract was with her local newspaper, the Kitchissippi Times, and her association with that business brought her more and more customers. Lisa, who couldn’t stand the office confines of bosses, work hours, and schedules, began to enjoy the freedom of working at home. She didn’t have to worry about pleasing the boss – she was the boss. She didn’t have to worry about work hours – she could work nine-to-five, ten-to-seven, or whenever else she wanted. She didn’t have to worry about schedules, either – she could arrange her own meetings with clients when they were necessary.

Kitchissippi is one of the most popular areas in Ottawa for people who work at home, as shown on the map below. Analysis of the 2011 Household Survey shows that 470 people in Kitchissippi gave “Home” as their place of work, the second highest number for a single ward in Ottawa. According to the same survey, 18.6% of people who worked at home in Ottawa worked, like Lisa, in the professional, scientific and technical services industry – by far the highest proportion.

When Tony Lui wakes up in the morning at his usual time of 5:15, he rarely does anything other than brush his teeth before he’s out the door. Fifteen minutes later, he’s arrived as his workplace near Hunt Club and Riverside and is ready to start his work day, working with software and doing programming jobs. It’s something he’s been doing for almost seven years. But he didn’t always have it so easy.

Lui lives in Ottawa’s Kanata South suburb, an area with median commuting times reaching up to 26 minutes one way, according to data collected in the 2011 National Household Survey. Most of Ottawa’s suburbs have median commuting times approaching 25 to 30 minutes, with Orléans, Barrhaven and Stittsville being the most noticeable (excluding the area the census tracts attribute to Ottawa east of Cumberland but do not actually fall inside Ottawa’s wards).

Lui used to have a similar commute time – during rush hours, the drive from his house to his workplace can take at least 30 minutes.

“When I first started [at my workplace], people started around 8:00, 8:30. Those times I started around that time, but we were living pretty close to work back then so it was okay. Then we moved here, and since we had to take my son to school sometimes I still left around 8:00, so the commute time back then was at least half an hour for sure,” said Lui.

Back then, Lui and his wife had recently moved to Kanata to find a good school for their only son. A large reason they choose Kanata, Lui said, was that he had worked in the area previously and was familiar with it. However, the move combined with the fact the Lui drove his son to school every day meant a long trip to work.

According to Margo Hilbrecht, former Associate Director of Research for the Canadian Index of Wellbeing, commuting times upwards of an hour can have noticeable health effects.

“We found that if you are commuting for longer than that, it tends to decrease the amount of time you spend in social activities, it decreases time for just about everything. If you look at time, and you have twenty-four hours in a day, there are going to be trade-offs,” said Hilbrecht.

According to a paper Hilbrecht co-authored on the issue, being stuck in heavy traffic can add even more problems.

It makes sense, then, that as soon as Lui had the chance he tried to alter his commute time. His workplace allows its employees to work flexible hours, and it was something Lui took full advantage of.

“I don’t like getting stuck in traffic,” said Lui, smiling. “So after we don’t have to take [my son] in anymore, I experimented a few times and decided there’s no such time as a good time. So the best time is to go early.”

But Lui’s solution doesn’t work for everbody. Some people are unable to work flexible hours, and have fixed start times and end times. Others, like Lui used to, have to drive their children to school and are forced to commute to work after, often during rush hours. For these people, Hilbrecht has a suggestion.

“If you can work some kind of physical activity into your day, it seems to lessen the negative effects of a long commute. Whether that means parking farther away from your office and walking there, or going to the gym during lunch time, try to somehow integrate it into your day. And it’s difficult, when you have less time because you have a longer commute. But people who were able to do that were better off than the people who weren’t.”

Still, it is no longer something Lui needs to worry about. After coming in at 5:30 a.m., he works 7 and a half hours before leaving work at 1:00 p.m. On the twenty minute drive back (on average, Lui said) he plays a game, analyzing other drivers and trying to guess where they are going. Then he is home – just in time for lunch.

Here is a map showing the demographic of the residents of Ottawa who speak an aboriginal language, according to Statistics Canada's 2011 National Household Survey dataset. Considered to be a breakout in Canada’s hip hop scene, 24 years old Indigenous artist Cody Coyote is one of Ottawa's arboriginal language speakers. Here is his story.

“Guess what saved me? My culture.”

24 years old Ojibwa artist Cody Coyote had to persevere through a lot growing up as an Indigenous youth in Ottawa. From drugs and gangs to abuse and domestic violence, it all started when his family moved to Orleans.

“We found new challenges that didn’t exists to us as young kids, he says speaking about him and his siblings. You run around the playground and it doesn’t matter which colour or nationalities you are: you love everyone.”

Going from a multi-nationalities neighbourhood to a more Cauacasian one, he says racial discrimination started during the first days at school. He recalls other children making fun of his long hair, calling him a stupid Indian, a bison rider, or even mocking him by doing the hand over the mouth gesture, typical behaviour of Hollywood movies on Indians and cowboys.

Adopted by a family in Ottawa at a young age, his father’s birth certificate indicates that their ancestors are from Matachewan First Nations. Him, his father and his brother have just returned from a trip to the reserve.

“We are now just finding out who are blood relatives are. My dad will be finding out who is biological mom and dad are, so I will be able to know what clan I come from, which we are all really thankful for because the clans pass down from a generation to another,” he says.