TIM HUNT’S MAIN STREET SKETCHES

From the June 2025 Issue

Tim Hunt explores his community outfitted with a small sketchbook, pen, and watercolour kit. In our regular feature, he shares the pages from his sketchbook and tells the stories behind his work.

The heritage plaque on Hydro Substation No.5 recounts a surprising history of this familiar site along Riverdale Avenue. Slattery’s Field, a humble cow pasture, became a makeshift landing strip for a pilot performing stunts at the Central Canada Exhibition in 1911. In 1913, it hosted the landing of the first flight between two Canadian cities (Montreal and Ottawa). “Both pilots had to contend with cows and horses which shared this crude airfield,” the plaque reads.

The austere modernist structure that now sits on what was once the Slattery farm was designed in the mid-1940s by architect J. Albert Ewart, designer of Knox Presbyterian Church at Elgin and Lisgar streets. It speaks of a time when utilitarian public infrastructure was treated with formality and a touch of class. The Ottawa Hydro Electric building will soon be joined by a neighbouring structure on the corner of Riverdale and Main due to increasing power demands from our burgeoning community.

On summer weekends, the occasional biplane still roams the skies, and I couldn’t resist the anachronistic touch in this drawing.