Charlotte Ogilvie: matriarch of three generations of Glebeites
By Ivo Krupka
Charlotte Ogilvie was the matriarch of three generations of Glebeites. She was 13 years old in September 1922 when she entered Grade 9 at the “Glebe campus” of the Ottawa Collegiate Institute (OCI). When she died early in her 76th year, three of her four siblings, her three children, five of her grandchildren and a son-in-law had all attended Glebe Collegiate. Janet, her eldest, also briefly taught at Glebe.
Although she lived in Centretown for her first few years, Charlotte’s home was in the Glebe. She and her four siblings lived in an imposing, three-storey house at 96 Carling Avenue (now Glebe Avenue) that burned down many years ago. It was east of Bank Street, just down from St. Matthew’s Anglican Church, her spiritual home, where she married Warren Buskard in 1933 and from which she was laid to rest in 1984. Charlotte’s father, Noel Ogilvie, an alderman in Capital Ward for most of the 1950s, was a benefactor of St. Matthew’s.
Charlotte’s two sisters, Jane and Louise, were Glebe students, as was brother Noel “Buzz”, who was later a Spitfire pilot in the Second World War. Her other brother, Jim, did not attend Glebe.
All university graduates, one with a PhD and several others with advanced degrees, Charlotte’s Glebeite descendants and in-laws distinguished themselves in careers in medicine, nursing, psychotherapy, teaching, the private and public sectors, diplomacy and the military. All were active in student affairs or athletics at Glebe, or both.
After Charlotte married Warren in 1933, they moved to Old Ottawa South. Their children, Janet, Noel and Ruth, attended Hopewell Avenue Public School and then Glebe Collegiate.
In 1958, Janet married Joe Scanlon, a journalist, political staffer and director of Carleton University’s School of Journalism. Eventually, they moved to Ottawa South, and their three children, David, Lucy and Leslie, attended Glebe.
Charlotte’s son, Noel left Ottawa after graduating from Glebe, and his children went to high schools elsewhere.
When we weren’t yet in our teens, Ruth and I met at Ruth’s house in Old Ottawa South, just down the street from mine. We often walked together to Glebe. A few years after our marriage in 1964, Ruth and I moved to our home on Powell Avenue, a couple of hundred metres from Glebe Collegiate. We have lived there ever since, except for some years in Montreal and Australia. Our two daughters, Lisa and Krista, were Glebeites like their parents.
Charlotte Ogilvie’s descendants not only followed her as Glebeites, but one daughter and a son-in-law have made the Glebe home for more than half a century. We and Charlotte’s other Glebeite descendants living in Canada will be celebrating Glebe Collegiate’s 100th anniversary October 14 to 16.
Ivo Krupka is a long-time Glebe resident and Glebe Collegiate graduate. Charlotte Ogilvie was his mother-in-law.
