{"id":8164,"date":"2017-12-06T15:43:14","date_gmt":"2017-12-06T20:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=8164"},"modified":"2025-10-10T10:56:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T14:56:07","slug":"macdonald-gardens-park","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/macdonald-gardens-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Lifting Macdonald Gardens Park"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Lifting Macdonald Gardens Park\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

There was a snowstorm raging when Carleton Prof. Susan Ross<\/a> first took her students to Ottawa\u2019s Macdonald Gardens Park, a diverse pocket of apartment towers, walk-ups, single-family homes and a few institutional buildings tucked into the easternmost corner of Lowertown, between Rideau and St. Patrick streets along the Rideau River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the group from CDNS 5402 \u2014 a graduate seminar in heritage conservation in the university\u2019s School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies<\/a> \u2014 walked around the neighbourhood with longtime local Nancy Miller Chenier<\/a>, co-chair of the Lowertown Community Association (LCA<\/a>) heritage committee, they passed through the green space at the core of the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Macdonald Gardens Park, eight acres of manicured lawns, mature vegetation and winding paths presided over by a hexagonal hilltop stone summer house, is well used and loved by area residents. But its historical significance \u2014 like that of the surrounding neighbourhood \u2014 is largely overlooked in a city of grand federal promenades and stately government buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lifting
An archival photo of the hexagonal hilltop stone summer house that presides over Macdonald Gardens Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So Ross and seven master\u2019s students decided to make Macdonald Gardens Park the focus of their winter term study in community heritage<\/a>. And their efforts helped the LCA secure an official heritage designation<\/a> for the park, which celebrated its 100th<\/sup> anniversary in 2014, from the City of Ottawa in June 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This type of recognition, unprecedented for a park in Ottawa, has both tangible and symbolic implications. The heritage status not only provides a check on development to the park and surrounding streetscape, it also draws overdue attention to the site of one of Ottawa\u2019s oldest cemeteries, an urban oasis designed by pioneering landscape architect Frederick G. Todd<\/a> \u2014 and the heart of a vibrant neighbourhood whose evolution reflects several interesting chapters in the growth of the national capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMacdonald Gardens Park has been enshrined as a commemorative landscape,\u201d says Ross. \u201cThis will help keep the space open, and creates the potential for remembering.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Lifting<\/figure>\n\n\n

Enshrining Macdonald Gardens Park As a Commemorative Landscape<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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The seeds of the Macdonald Gardens Park project were planted before Ross joined the faculty at Carleton in December 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After working as an architect, she had spent the previous 11 years developing an understanding of heritage conservation policy issues in the federal government\u2019s Heritage Conservation Directorate. Miller Chenier and others in the LCA learned that Ross would be starting at the university and encouraged her to take a closer look at Macdonald Gardens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That suggestion brought Ross and a multi-disciplinary group of grad students interested in social history, architectural heritage and planning policy to the neighbourhood during the aforementioned snowstorm in January 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n