In honour of Halloween, we thought it appropriate to look back at one of the most popular sites on Ottawa’s Haunted Walks: the Carleton County Jail on Nicholas Street.

Credit: Wilson, N.D. / Library and Archives Canada / PA-044698

The maximum security Nicholas Street Gaol was opened in 1862 as one of the area’s earliest prisons, intending to be a new model jail for prison reform and rehabilitation of prisoners. It fell far short of this however, instead becoming a site of a variety of inhumane and unsanitary conditions (Sound familiar?). In 1869 it played host to the public execution of Patrick James Whelan, by hanging, for the assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee.

Female Prisoners outside of their cells. Credit: Topley Studio / Library and Archives Canada / PA-027437

The jail was closed in 1972 and its prisoners were transferred to the new Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre. In 1973 it was re-purposed into a hostel. The building remains a heritage building under the City of Ottawa By-law 380-78.

Read More

• Canada’s Historical Places: Carleton County Gaol
• From the Carleton County Gaol to the HI-Ottawa Jail Hostel

 

Long before we started our weekly e-newsletter (which of course you’re subscribed to), the CCLA had a print bulletin. A few years back, we collected all the copies of this we could find in the library and had them bound in a hard-cover format. I refer to them constantly for information on the CCLA from years past, and I was curious when this was started (or at least, how far back we have copies of the newsletter). To my great delight, the oldest CCLA Bulletin we have is dated October 20, 1972 – perfect for this week’s Throwback Thursday!

Other notable entries from this newsletter include notice for the 1973 Law Ball, that the LSUC was looking to establish a lawyer referral service for Ottawa, and that a group of local lawyers had organized a dinner and speech by Earl Nightingale. That Annual Member Dinner under item number one certainly sounds like a ripping good time – perhaps we should reintroduce a comedic element to our AGM?!

As an aside, if you’re ever cleaning out your offices and come across old copies of the CCLA Newsletter or CCLA Bulletin, that would otherwise be destined for recycling, please let us know! We’d love to fill the gaps in our collection.

This weekend is the DCAO / CCLA’s 28th Criminal Law Conference, so naturally we dipped into our conference papers collection for this week’s TBT.

The first DCAO / CCLA Criminal Law Conference was held in May 1985, and you can see here the table of contents of papers from that year.  The colours refer to a rather unusual method of organizing the printed collection of papers; unfortunately a copy of the agenda has been lost to time so it’s hard to say if it was anything more than that during the conference.  Our old conference paper collections are always an interesting look at what was a hot topic during the time, and truly at some of the fantastic speakers we’ve had at our conferences over the years.

I think technology-related throwbacks have to be my favourite simply due to how fast everything changes. Perhaps one of the earliest buzzwords for the internet: remember the “Information Superhighway”?

A while ago I found this Magazine holder in the back of the library – the associated publication long since weeded, unfortunately – but the holder was still here:

It now resides on my desk and makes me happy every time I see it.

Ottawa woke up this morning to the Château trending on Twitter. What now!? If somehow you haven’t heard, an expansion concept has been released, and to put it mildly, people are not super enthusiastic about it.  This had us scampering to Library and Archives Canada to find some nice, old pictures of the Château from when it was shiny and new.

Believed to be the official opening ceremony, June 1, 1912. (Credit: William James Topley/Library and Archives Canada/PA-009252)

 

Taken from the east, from the Corry building, 1916. (Credit: Topley Studio Fonds / Library and Archives Canada / PA-011240)

 

The interior of the Grand Trunk Railway Station, where there was this beautiful tunnel entrance leading to the Château, 1916. (Credit: Topley Studio / Library and Archives Canada / PA-011245)

 

With the first expansion wing, 1937. (Credit: Library and Archives Canada / PA-)

A not uncommon question of us at the library is “What is your oldest book?” It seems like an easy question to answer, but are we talking strictly about treatises? Law reports? Legislation? What about that some of our oldest “material” (which for us is always judicial decisions) are reprints – reprints that are well over 100 years old, mind you – and not the “original” publication? Not so simple a question!

But, for this post, if we’re taking legislation and law reports out of the equation, the oldest book in our library is:

Archbold’s Summary of the Law Relating to Pleading and Evidence in Criminal Cases, 5th American Edition, 1846.

I feel like if this blog could have sound effects, then this particular reveal would be met with a giant and unsatisfying clunk, as this certainly isn’t some charming and unusual relic of a bygone era. The Archbold is still published by Sweet and Maxwell (the Carswell outfit in the UK), and is currently released as an annual title (and, of course, is now also available online). It was originally published in 1822, and has long been considered the leading British text on criminal law. We’ve seen our lawyers move to using Canadian texts on criminal practice and procedure almost exclusively, but when the CCLA Library was founded in the late 1880s, this book would have been a critically important title. It appears that someone donated their copy of this to the library (that squiggle at the top right corner certainly looks like the signature of the previous owner to me) – do you think they had any idea that this book would be in the library almost 130 years later? At some point this book was sent out for re-binding, so it is actually in pretty fantastic condition for a book that is 170 years old. If you want to take a flip through it, just ask at the desk and we can get it for you! We’d strongly suggest, however, that you don’t rely on this for your research.

Out of curiosity, we had a look through our old newsletters and found a reference to when the CCLA purchased its first computer. Apparently it was early February 1987 when we picked up a SPERRY HT, and were quite excited about it:

I remember growing up in the 80s with computers the size of desks and printers twice as big; the one the CCLA bought was a little smaller as you can see in the picture below, but it definitely brings back memories!

I really love looking at old photos of Ottawa, and was especially excited to find this great shot when I was looking for pictures of Somerset House. Our current courthouse is located on at 161 Elgin Street, so most of us are probably quite familiar with the Elgin / Laurier intersection. But behold!

This picture, from around 1948, shows Elgin Street looking north, back when it was considered to be a ceremonial boulevard leading up to the war memorial. The area that looks like a big black circle towards the bottom of the picture? That’s Laurier and Elgin, and *that’s* a traffic circle! The northwest corner is the Lord Elgin hotel, and the southwest is the First Baptist Church, both of which still stand today. The other side of the street is a different story altogether – those buildings in the northeast corner of the intersection were torn down to make way for Confederation Park, and of course we’re now sitting in the courthouse in the southeast corner.

We get quite Olympic-obsessed at the CCLA Library, so there’s no better time to throw it back to the last (and only) time Canada hosted the Summer Olympics, which some of you might remember: Montreal in 1976. Our local connection to the Montreal Olympics of course is the Honourable Justice Fraser, who competed for Canada in Track & Field.

 

You can see more photos from Montreal 1976 on the Canadian Olympic website here.

Hillary Clinton made history last week by clinching the democratic nomination, but twenty years ago she also came to Ottawa as the First Lady and took in the sights. After the governor general at the time, Romeo LeBlanc, joked with the Clintons that they should have brought their skates, Hillary in fact did just that and took to the canal, telling her security team, “‘I brought my skates. I’m going to skate. My security is your problem.”