Archeological dig on the Hill unearths bits of early Ottawa
We’ve known all along that the history was beneath our feet. We just weren’t sure what it would look like.
All summer, archeologists have been digging in the grounds around Centre Block as part of the Parliament Hill renovation project, and they have been finding artifacts and foundations from what was known as Barrack Hill during the time that Lt.-Col. John By used the location as a military outpost in the early 19th century.
The team of archeologists has found fragments of old dishes, pieces of military equipment and soldiers’ uniforms, but the gem of the excavation so far is the foundation of a remarkably preserved guardhouse.
Historians have known from maps and records that remains of Barrack Hill were down there, but as lead archaeologist Stephen Jarrett explained, they weren’t sure what condition it would be in.
“This building, we have some vague information about it,” Jarrett said of the guardhouse, explaining that his team’s work had switched to “adding to that story and understanding it better through the excavations.” He said this was what made the dig so exciting for him: “the newness and learning about how they were using the site.”
The guardhouse is almost a square, about 10 feet by 11 feet (3 metres by 3.5 metres), with an extension off the west side. It’s made of unevenly sized grey stone bricks and is divided into several rooms. Some of these rooms are very small and don’t appear to have doors or entryways into the building ’s main section.
Jarrett said there was a fear that construction of underground utilities during the 20th century might have damaged the buried remains of the By-era barracks. In this year’s excavations, though, archeologists discovered that the ruins were protected by about a metre of earth that had been piled on during construction of the original Parliament buildings in the 1860s.
The project of renovating Centre Block is expected to take nearly a decade to finish. Archeologists are working right next to its eastern facade, in an area that once held a parking lot.
Asha Boucher-Sharma, project manager for the dig, says doing archeological work is important in the context of the renovations to ensure that undiscovered ruins or artifacts don’t get damaged during construction.
“The renovations are happening, and it’s always part of due diligence to do desktop studies to see if there’s a potential for archeology. So we did that and we saw that there are hot spots, various places where we could do archeology,” Boucher-Sharma said.
A few preliminary trenches were dug last year, revealing the guardhouse foundations. This year has been about uncovering the site as a whole.
Jarrett said excavations hadn’t yet led to any “radical” shift in the historic understanding of Barrack Hill. Nonetheless, he said, the guardhouse alone is full of unanswered questions and tiny discoveries. For example, while all old maps showed the guardhouse was there, none of them included the extension. According to Jarrett, mortar on that section indicated it was added later, probably in the 1850s. As for the rooms, he said there was work to be done in determining how they were used.
The public servants running the dig presented the site and some of the artifacts for public viewings during two weekends in July.
“We didn’t think the preservation was going to be this good, and we also found extensions, so it actually ended up bigger than what we had originally expected,” Boucher-Sharma said. “So, once we saw that, we said, ‘Wow, what a great opportunity for the public to come and see.’ ”
A little farther from the guardhouse, closer to the Ottawa River, heavier equipment is being used to uncover the remains of a cookhouse. Between them is an entirely unexpected building that doesn’t appear on any old map. Jarrett said he couldn’t speculate on what use it would have had at the time, so for now his team is there to unearth artifacts and record scientific data.
Jarrett said it wasn’t known exactly when the Barrack Hill infrastructure was demolished, but it was likely in the 1860s. Some of the old military buildings, like the guardhouse, actually stood with the Parliament Buildings for a short time.
It had multiple buildings and uses, including housing By’s engineers while the Rideau Canal was under construction, and it had jail cells and hospital rooms. Its main use as a military outpost was motivated by the same fear of U.S. invaders that spurred the building of the canal to quickly ferry soldiers to and from Kingston.
The archeological dig is slated to continue until October, but Boucher-Sharma said project managers were open to the possibility it might take longer. “The idea is to do the job right,” she said.
Where the uncovered ruins will end up is “still under discussion,” Boucher-Sharma said, with project managers looking at several options. They ’ve pre-emptively removed a portion of the guardhouse wall for a “visitor experience” at a later date.
“The idea is to protect it in place so that we can continue with the renovations of the building without having it impact anything,” Boucher-Sharma said.