Fortress Ottawa: What Bytown might have been
In the 1830s, plans were prepared to turn Parliament Hill into a star-shaped fortress
After Queen Victoria chose Bytown as the capital of Canada in 1859, a strategic hill overlooking the Ottawa River was selected to be the site of the Parliament buildings. This area soon became the government precinct we know today.
A drawing in the collections of Library and Archives of Canada, however, offers a glimpse of a very different vision for the nation’s capital, a city that, in an alternate reality, might have become known as Fortress Ottawa. The impetus was the War of 1812 and the discovery that the United States intended to invade Upper Canada via the St. Lawrence River.
Plans were drawn up for an ambitious canal that would cut from Montreal to Kingston via the Ottawa River, providing a secure route and deterring any future American invasions along the St. Lawrence. Construction of the Rideau Canal began in 1826 and was completed in 1832. It still operates today, emptying into the Ottawa River beside Parliament Hill.
Tensions between Britain and America were renewed with the Rebellion of Upper Canada, which began in 1837 (the same year as the Rebellion of Lower Canada) and spurred fears that the new canal could be susceptible to American attack.
Orders were given in 1838 to build wooden guardhouses along the canal, and to plan the construction of a massive stone fortress at a strategic location in Bytown.
John Burrows, overseer of works in the British Ordnance department’s engineering office, drew the first sketch of the fortress in 1838, but the plan had been originally envisioned by canal builder Col. John By, who wanted to create a series of defensive structures to protect the waterway once it opened.
For Bytown he called for a fortress stretching almost a kilometre from the Ottawa River to what now is Queen Street, and from the canal in the east to Bank Street in the south, covering what was then known as Barrack Hill and the site of a small military outpost.
This original drawing is catalogued at the Library and Archives of Canada as “Plan of By Town Showing the Proposed Fortifications Land taken from Mr. Sparks, Lot No. C in Connecticut C., Also Crown Reserve O” and labelled “Citadel Hill.” It is signed by Maj. Daniel Bolton, who replaced Col. By as canal superintendent and for whom Major’s Hill Park was later named. It was, in fact, Burrows who owned the land before selling it to Sparks.
Mapped out with defensive moats, trenches and cannon placements, Bytown’s sprawling stone fortification on the hill was a typical 19th-century “star fort,” similar to Fort George in Halifax, also known as Citadel Hill, and the Citadelle de Québec in Quebec City. The “star fort” layout style evolved during the era of gunpowder and cannons and was perfected by Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban, a French engineer who studied 16thcentury forts designed by the Knights of Malta. A star fort built by the order with trenches and angled walls withstood a monthlong siege by the Ottoman Empire. This layout remained the standard in fort design until the 20th century.
Ottawa’s planned fortress would have also integrated a water-filled moat trench to the south, where Laurier Street is now, to impede an attack. On the northern side, the natural limestone cliffs along the Ottawa River would have served as a defensive measure. Access and resupply points were at the canal near the Sappers Bridge, and a zigzagging trench with sixmetre-high stone walls would have run parallel to Queen Street. Parliament Hill, with its gently sloping banks to the south, was called a “glacis” positioned in front of the main trench so that the walls were almost totally hidden from horizontal artillery attack, preventing point-blank enemy fire.
After the rebellions were quashed and the threat of an attack from the United States fizzled out by the mid-1850s, Canada abandoned plans to fortify Bytown.
In 1856, the Rideau Canal system was relinquished to civilian control, and three years later Bytown was selected as the capital of the Province of Canada. The grand plans for Ottawa’s massive stone fortress were shelved and the area that would have been Citadel Hill became the scene of a different kind of battle, that of politics.
He called for a fortress stretching almost a kilometre from the Ottawa River to what now is Queen Street, and from the canal in the east to Bank Street in the south.