Lebreton Flats, 19th Century
Written by Bytown Museum
on
03/Dec/2009
The town of Richmond (in southern Ottawa) was settled in 1818 by veterans of the War of 1812. The Richmond Road, a corduroy road, ran from the new settlement north to the Chaudière Falls where settlers landed to unload their boats. The area became known as Richmond Landing.
In the early 1820s, Captain Lebreton bought the land in the hopes of selling it to the British for more than five times what he had paid, as he knew the British were thinking of beginning the Rideau Canal at this location. The British declined his offer.
As the lumber industry began to thrive in Bytown, the area now known as Lebreton Flats developed quickly, home to lumber workers and lumber barons along with thousands of feet of board lumber.
On April 26, 1900, a chimney fire that began in Hull jumped the Ottawa River and decimated Lebreton Flats and the surrounding area. The Great Fire of 1900 left 15,000 people homeless. Only seven people were killed in the fire but many more died of disease in the unsanitary tent cities where the homeless were forced to live.
Did you know that one of Bytown's first commercial enterprises was Mother Firth's Inn at Richmond Landing, where she made otter hats to order?
