Ottawa Women’s Canadian Club a part of Canada’s history

By Louise Rachlis

From socks for soldiers to scholarships for students, the Ottawa Women’s Canadian Club has been helping and hosting for over 117 years.

Guest speakers at the Ottawa Women’s Canadian Club meetings and luncheons have ranged from princesses to prime ministers, explorers and astronauts.

On September 14, the Ottawa Women’s Canadian Club again met at the Chateau Laurier, the same location where the OWCC held its first meeting in October 1912, two years after the club’s formation in 1910.

Some of the upcoming speakers are Thursday October 12, Dr. Jacalyn Duffin, who will talk about “Stanley’s Dream: the Canadian Medical Expedition to Easter Island; on Thursday November 16, the speaker will be Mark O’Neill, president and CEO of the federal Crown Corporation that operates the Canadian Museum of History and the Canadian War Museum; on Thursday, December 14, there will be a presentation of Christmas Classics by St. Joseph’s Catholic Secondary School Choir, and on Thursday January 18, Dr. Peg Herbert, founder of Help Lesotho, will speak on “Changing 12,000 lives isn’t for Wimps.”

“We’re a part of Canada’s history,” said Loreen O’Blenis, current president of the Club, who joined six years ago.

“I felt it was a good meeting place for women of like interests, to meet new people and exchange ideas,” she said. “It gives us an opportunity to discuss things important to Canada and to our communities…We get so much information from television, it’s refreshing to have a live person with new information and to whom we can ask questions.”

Many of the group’s younger members are professionals with children, and love to come, she said. “ We also invite two high school students, chosen by their schools, every second month and they come with wonderful biographies. We introduce them to the members and learn about what they’re doing.”

Rowena Cooper, Club Archivist, joined the Club in 2005, when she moved to Kemptville from Caledon, Ont. “My sister-in-law told me there was no question, I was going to come.” She stayed because she “liked the people, I liked the speakers and it was nice to go out once a month.”

Formerly a professional archivist for the Regional Municipality of Peel, she wrote the history of the club, “Ottawa Women’s Canadian Club 1910-2010” and is updating the book now. 

As she was doing her research, she was “blown away by what they’d accomplished during WW1.” “They had leapt right into fundraising for refugees, and by the end of the war they’d raised altogether about $279,000. They took over the Ottawa Free Press for a day in 1916 to prove that they could.” 

Cooper likes a foreword written by Lady Foster: “We are only women. We have no votes for Parliamentary Candidates and are not eligible for election to the House of Commons, nor for appointment to the Senate, though we remember to have heard the latter spoken of as a delightful resort for ‘old women’. Yet in becoming responsible for the sentiments expressed on this editorial page our motto for the day is: with malice towards none and charity for all.” 

Funds raised from the sale of advertising and the sale of newspapers from that one edition enabled the club to underwrite the cost of a free buffet for soldiers and sailors in Victoria Station, London, one day per month, feeding about 12,000 men and women daily, wrote Cooper.

According to the Club history on the website, a group of 30 women met at the home of Mrs. Archibald Parker on January 17, 1910 to discuss the formation of a Women’s Canadian Club. (A Men’s Canadian Club of Ottawa had been formed in 1903.) Mrs. R. G. McConnell moved a motion that a club be formed and the motion was seconded by Mrs. Clifford Sifton. The motion passed unanimously with Mrs. Adam Shortt being appointed to the Chair. An interim constitution was presented by Mrs. McConnell.

 A membership fee of $1.00 per year was set, and the first public meeting of the club took place on December 3, 1910 in the Assembly Hall of the Collegiate Institute. Speaker Sir George W. Ross spoke about “What every Canadian should know.”

The Chateau Laurier hotel opened in 1912, and the OWCC had its first meeting there on October 19, 1912, meeting at the historic hotel ever since.

Men are welcome to join the Ottawa Women’s Canadian Club. 

Retired RCMP Staff Sergeant Garth Hampson has been singing O Canada at the end of the meetings for 32 years.

There were 91 members at the first Annual General Meeting in January 1911. By the beginning of World War I the membership stood at about 500. According to the history, at the outset of war, Mrs. Herridge wrote to Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden offering the services of the club in war work. Membership climbed to just over 1,600 members as the OWCC threw itself into war work.

 “Over 61,000 letters were written to soldiers on the front line,” said the history. “Fund raising events were held for Belgian and Serbian relief. Thousands of pairs of socks were knitted, thousands of comfort parcels were sent to wounded servicemen. Funds were raised for three motor ambulances and to pay the wages of a nurse for one year. In all, well over $300,000 was raised to fund charities such as Belgian and Serbian Relief during the course of the war.”

The Club incorporated under the War Charities Act in 1918, and as a lasting legacy after Work War I, a “sum of $4,000 raised by entertainments, sale of service flags and special donations was devoted to the foundation of a scholarship at Queen’s University for Prisoners of War enlisted from, or resident in Military District #3 and their descendants, or failing these, veterans of the great war and their descendants.” 

Today, the Ottawa Women’s Canadian Club is still awarding scholarships, and the program has been expanded to award scholarships at University of Ottawa and Carleton University, as well as at Queen’s. “The first scholarship at Queen’s was for ex-servicemen and their relatives, but now we leave it up to the university to decide who receives it. It is given to men or women, and we like to give it to people doing Canadian studies,” said Cooper.

During the years between the Wars, event organizers became “very imaginative,” she wrote. “One year they wrote to every Premier in Canada as well as the Prime Minister, inviting them to speak to the club. Several of the Premiers accepted the invitation.”

At the onset of World War II, the Club once again went into high gear, registering under the War Charities Act to enable them to raise necessary funds. At the beginning of the 1914-18 war ,Sir George Perley came to the aid of the Club, supplying them with a house at 270 Cooper Street in which to carry out most of the day-to-day war work. In 1939, the Estate of Sir George Perley came to the rescue of the club giving offices at 55 Metcalfe Street for the club to carry out necessary work.

In 1946 the Club’s annual membership fee was raised from $1 to $2, the first time in their history that the fee had been raised. 

Today, new members are welcome, and new memberships may be purchased for an annual fee of $67.00 (including HST) by completing the form on the website.

Luncheon tickets are available monthly, or as a pre-paid package. For more information, please view www.owcc.ca.

Cold weather, warm hearts, as four friends have met to ski together every winter for 34 years

By Louise Rachlis

The adventure began when the four women had eight children among them, the youngest two just toddlers, and another toddler was soon to join the crowd and make it nine.

Now, 34 years later, the children have all grown up, six are married, and there are five grand-children.   The youngest three children are each 34 years old, as their mothers look forward to their 35^th trip together!

The four longtime friends - Lynn Graham, Louise Archer, Mary Dawson and Mira Mossop - have been meeting up every winter to ski together, and haven’t missed a year, despite demanding schedules. All in their early to mid-70s, they celebrate milestone birthdays together too, usually with a lunch.

Mira and Lynn met through their husbands, who were friends. Lynn was friends with Peter Dawson from their CUSO days in Ghana; Louise knew Mary from university, and Mira from working at IBM. They are retired, except for Mary, who is Parliament’s Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner.

Back at the start of 1984, three duos began discussing “a little ladies’ getaway” to ski. “Two of us had toddlers, and one was about to adopt a child in the near future,” said Louise Archer, who provided the photos and much of the information for this story. “A winter ski weekend seemed like a perfect way to recover from the excitement of Christmas, with in-laws visiting and children home from school. We all appreciated the idea of fresh air and exercise.”

The three pairs soon decided to make it a foursome and take their first trip to Hovey Manor in the Eastern Townships, particularly appropriate because three of the women had grown up in Montreal.

“Extreme cold challenged our first trip,” said Louise, who recalls skiing to another resort and asking if they could have hot chocolate to warm up. “The resort was not very accommodating as we were not staying there. Not my idea of customer satisfaction!”

Their destinations have varied from the Laurentians, Rigaud in west Quebec, to Lake Placid, Algonquin Park, and Montebello. “We all had busy lives, husbands who travelled, so this weekend was a relaxing respite from all the demands.”

 On the women’s weekends away, the four husbands soon started getting together for a video/pizza party with the nine children, and then they took them home to babysitters and went out for a gourmet dinner, joined by a fifth friend,  who also appreciated fine restaurants.

The four women looked forward to their meet-up every year. “We loved the skiing, good dinners, board games, and chance to catch up with each other’s lives. It is good to spend time with friends.”

There were years when one of them was stressed by an elderly parent having passed away, or in hospital, and the group was most supportive. “We’ve seen each other through broken bones, a divorce, a bout with cancer, children’s weddings, retirements, being widowed, and the ups and downs of life,” said Louise. “I certainly think of the weekend as one of the most predictable highlights of the year. Now we are more interested in any spa services offered, and will only ski in great conditions – warm enough, good snow, flattish trails. Incredibly, we have never had to cancel once a date was chosen.”

Their shared memories abound - “the year we missed the turn to Ottawa in a snow storm and went several miles out of our way as we played trivial pursuit in the car; the early years when we met for tea to discuss the timing and destination (now it just takes a couple of emails and phone calls); the dinners in St. Jovite where they played the same Zamfir tape about a dozen times during the meal;  the time in Ste. Adele when we had confusing trails we found a road and called a taxi to return us to the hotel before dark (the husbands never let us forget this move); staying at a former monastery where the monks’ rooms were so small we could barely open our suitcases; a dining room that had birds of prey – live! on a high shelf; the hosts who wouldn’t  give us a second piece of bread with our soup at lunch; the one and only time we trekked to Algonquin Park and were asked to take our sock clad feet off the rustic coffee table; our return to Hovey Manor when we celebrated our 20^th year by adding a third night, which happened to be Valentine’s Day and we were each given roses; and, celebrating our 30^th year by spending a week in St. Lucia where we swam daily instead of skiing.”

The families all recognize it as a venerable tradition, and as the women prepared for their 34^th meet-up, they were appreciative that their husbands all supported those adventures. The men too have established great friendships in the process.

“This is our sixth stay at Chateau Montebello, where the lobby is welcoming, the pool is an option, spa services are great, and best of all, one trail is flat. It is even rumoured that two or three forgot their skis at home.”

Cadillac survives five generations, still revving its engine for Sunday drives

By Louise Rachlis

On the August long weekend, a gleaming 1956 Cadillac will be officially unveiled at the Cowan Family’s Annual Croquet Tournament at their Heart Lake cottage in Quebec.

The family’s annual reunion is a big deal - the Ottawa Citizen did a full page story 30 years ago - but the presence this year of the Cadillac makes it even more special.

The Cadillac travelled a long road to be there, beginning with its original owner, Alec Benson Cowan, who lived at 516 Queen Elizabeth Drive. Alec and his wife Frances Elinor (aka Nell) built the original family cottage in Quebec, started the croquet tournament, and bought the ‘56 Cadillac.

Alec Benson Cowan (1892-1976) passed the car to his son, Ira Benson Cowan (Ben, of Aylmer Ontario), who in turn passed it to his son, John Cowan.

In 2003, the car passed to Eric (Alec’s grandson) and Dan (his great, great, grandson), who purchased the car off of John Cowan’s estate to create a scholarship trust fund for the school where he taught.

 Alec’s great grandson and conservator Justin Johnson is currently restoring the Cadillac’s original bill of sale.

The car was parked on blocks for most of the last 13 years, and “people would needle me about when I was going to do something about it,” said Dan, who lives in Alta Vista with his wife Allison, their son Jack, 14, and daughter Grace, 11.  Dan works for the federal government, and Allison is with The Conference Board of Canada.

After replacing a number of engine components themselves in spring 2016, Dan and Eric heard the engine roar to life for the first time in years. This sound inundated Eric with childhood memories of fishing with his Grandfather Alec.  With a renewed commitment to restoring the vehicle, they invited family to help reach the finish line together.

Family elder Alan Roffey of Toronto jumpstarted the Caddy fund with a generous $1,000 contribution and others soon joined in.

The family now maintains a Facebook group, Alec Cowan’s Original 1956 Cadillac, to share their car memories and chronicle the restoration at Wicked Garage, in Greely.

Dan posted:

“On November 1st, 1956, Alexander B. Cowan (Alec) of 516 Queen Elizabeth Drive, Ottawa, ON traded in his ‘54 Buick for a new 1956 Series 62 Cadillac Sedan. Memories of this iconic car with the telltale Cadillac fins and chrome trim now span five generations.

“By all accounts, the ‘56 Caddy has been through it all... business trips, fishing trips, family road trips, vacations, weddings, funerals, croquet, reunions, accidents, repairs, storage, restorations and countless drivers….

“With your generous support we’ll be able to reintegrate Alec’s Caddy into our lives and continue making new memories for another 60 years to come. Weddings... graduations... reunions.... croquet....family portraits..... Sunday drives.... Just imagine them all with the original family car. Let’s do this together.”

It was a five-month project, involving lots of time in the garage, sourcing and ordering special parts, and satisfying the safety checks.  

When a locksmith opened the glove box, they found a handwritten note which listed the codes for songs on the custom horn including “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here.”

Also in the glove box was the original owner’s manual. It contained such instructions as: IMPORTANT: PUSHING OR TOWING – Your Cadillac should not be towed or pushed for any greater distance than normally required to start the engine.

Another funny instruction in the owner’s manual was “TO STOP – release the accelerator and step on the brake.”

In 1956, Phil Cowan, Alec’s only surviving son who now lives in Texas, was in his final year in Engineering at Queens and driving a rusted out Morris Minor. “I drove home from Kingston at Christmas and froze my butt. The Morris had no heater and there were big holes in the floorboards. When I was off to visit my lady friend, Dad asked if I would like to drive his new ‘Ford.’ I was shocked and excited to head out in the Caddy. Had great fun showing off and probably put more miles on it than he had in the previous month. Fond memories of that car. I wish I looked as good as it does these many years later.”

Family members have been credited with restoring specific parts of the vehicle.  For example, Maia Roffey, Alec’s great granddaughter, paid for a vanity licence plate, after hosting an online poll of what it ought to be. On October 30, bearing new licence plate “COWAN 56”, the car had her first Sunday drive out on some country roads, performing beautifully.

As work progressed, Dan posted: “Nothing’s easy with old cars!!!! One of the last stumbling blocks we are facing is that of the windshield wipers. The old wipers operated on vacuum pressure created by the running engine. At first they didn’t work. Then for a while they worked, but extremely slowly, and then there was a brief period when we couldn’t shut them off!!!!”

On October 13, he added: “Squared our account with Wicked Garage today. Latest round includes buying and installing the gauges, lots of wiring and electrical tidy up, fabricating a ‘battery tray’ to hold that funky battery, removing and straightening a terribly bent ‘tie rod’ - likely from a bad tow job at some point, lots of diagnosis and repair/replacements to get the horn and lights all working properly, and fixing a hole in the exhaust. Thanks again Wicked Garage and Jeremy for all the great work.”

Dan and Allison’s children Jack and Grace are the fifth generation to be riding in the Cadillac, which has always been stored indoors in the family’s garage.  “The real miracle of this car is that the Cowans aren’t really a car family,” said Dan, “and yet, the car and the croquet trophy are among the only heirloom artifacts that have survived five generations. I’m grateful to all the generations that have come together to help keep this family heirloom alive and running.”

Dan Cowan will be part of the Human Library feature of the June 17th “Seniors Month and Age Well Celebration” at the Nepean Sportsplex, and he looks forward to chatting with people there. The show details and human library members are listed at www.agewellsolutions.ca/seniors-and-families/agewell-celebration/ .

Heritage apartment building continues to thrive with ‘neighborliness’

By Louise Rachlis

“People don’t usually think of rental buildings as a home for the rest of their lives,” said Bill Brown, who has lived at the Windsor Arms Apartments at 150 Argyle Avenue for 34 years. “Many people here do.”

The Windsor Arms is an historic five-storey, 42-unit apartment building that once offered lobby and parking attendants and maid service when it opened in 1930. It was billed as “Ottawa’s first fireproof building.” The original owner of the building had his own apartment in it, which continues to be the largest apartment.

No such amenities now, but the building is a paragon of “neighborliness not nosiness,” said Brown, a retired teacher, as is his husband, John McKinven.

Brown credits the urban garden, which he and McKinven maintain meticulously, as one of the catalysts for camaraderie. “The garden changed how people interact with each other,” he said. “People began to stop and talk.”

In 2001, McKinven and Brown created a second garden, laid out in gravel, rocks and berms of the Ottawa Valley, meant to be seen from apartment windows. “It was the first time we presented a detailed plan to the owner, who paid for the plants….Right from the beginning, the owner, Sandy Smallwood of Andrex Holdings, has been restoring the historic details of the building. He doesn’t want to compromise the look of it. He even put storm windows on the inside of a few units to maintain the heritage status. He liked what we were doing with the garden and let us jump the sidewalk. The key element of our garden is the sidewalk. In the summer, 75 per cent of the people who go through it say something. People feel it’s an oasis on a summer day.”

In June 1984, the then landlord informed tenants that the building would be sold for conversion into a form of condominium but the tenants successfully fought off the conversion scheme. The previous owner converted the ground floor units into offices but the present owner, Andrex Holdings, returned all units to residential occupancy. The building is a designated Category 1 heritage building within the Centretown Heritage Conservation District.

“I’ve been involved in restoring old buildings since 1973,” said Sandy Smallwood of Andrex Holdings. “When I first started, there were no rent controls and landlords competed for tenants. Once the rent controls came on, I saw the relationship changing into one of landlords doing the basic minimum they had to do; they weren’t taking good care of their buildings…What happened is that the market got distorted and an adversarial relationship developed between tenants and landlord. The landlords felt ill done by. We always had that goal to restore the historic features, and it was a challenging time.”

However, thanks to “vacancy decontrol/recontrol”, when apartments starting turning over, they could then restore the apartments and increase the rents, said Smallwood.

“The historic buildings are a fertile environment for a caring community,” he said. “If you have ownership that is prepared to water the garden, it will flourish. Part of it is that you’re in a special place that has a history…What we’ve tried to do is celebrate that environment and to allow tenants to be in a place they’re glad to be in. We’re glad to have that working relationship; if we help them, they help us.”

His company has done the same thing at Strathcona Apartments on Laurier East in Sandy Hill, which they purchased in 1992. “One of the first things we did was put in accessible features in the building. What we thought would help seniors, also ended up helping mothers with strollers, all age groups. What a great investment doing that can be! We want to make all our buildings user friendly so people can stay throughout all their life stages.”

Strathcona has an active garden club and the oldest rooftop garden in the city. “There is such a community where people care about each other,” he said.

The garden at Windsor Arms spawned a composting program that six tenants take part in. “We hope they feel involved in the garden because their kitchen scraps end up there,” said McKinven.

For at least 20 years, the building has had a “sharing table” in the laundry room, where they leave furniture, books and knick knacks to share with others.

The two men are thrilled that the Windsor Arms now has a mix of young and old, young professionals, seniors, and five young families, who among other things have incorporated a children’s garden.

Most of the tenants don’t have cars “and don’t seem to care,” said Brown. There are just 12 spots in the building’s indoor garage.

“We find the current mix of families makes the place more welcoming,” said Brown. “We’ve always had families but often they would move out to the suburbs. These plan to raise their kids here.”

A year ago, Bill and tenant Susan Johnston began organizing house concerts in the building. About 30 attend, bringing their own chairs. “Most of us toss in $20, and all the money goes to the performers.”

The February concert was a musical afternoon and sing-a-long, with tenants providing food. It was a fundraiser for their second Little Library, this one for children’s books. March was Duo Brazil, Donna Brown and Andrew Mah.

A lecture series is an offshoot of the music concerts. The first speaker was Sandy Smallwood, speaking about the history of apartment buildings.

Three years ago the tenants of Windsor Arms reached out to their neighbors in Beaver Barracks to organize a “Please Walk Your Bikes” campaign on the Argyle sidewalk. “That opened new channels with our neighbors, running counter to the notion of renters not being involved in their building or community.”

They call their area and beyond “Museum Precinct”, and are working to rid the residential area of trucks and buses. “We’re not unique in Centretown. There are great things going on as part of the community at Options Bytown, CCOC Beaver Barracks, and Blair House as well.”