Temporary wartime buildings at Dow’s Lake
Photo: Temporary Building Number 8.
Source: City of Ottawa Archives, CA021401
Photo: 1958 Aerial view of the site, with the larger building Number 8 on the left.
Source: City of Ottawa, geoOttawa
Temporary wartime buildings at Dow’s Lake
By Sue Stefko
The new parking garage for the Ottawa Hospital Campus, going up on what used to be a park and a parking lot, is taking a lot longer to build than the two wartime timber buildings that were thrown up on that site during the Second World War.
As the public service tripled to 36,000 during the war, the city needed additional facilities to support its rapidly increasing workforce. Land was carved out of the Central Experimental Farm to construct two so-called “Temporary Buildings.”
Number 5 Temporary Building was built in 1941 and Number 8 was completed in December 1942 and expanded in 1944. They were two of Ottawa’s 18 Temporary Buildings (though some sources only note 14 such buildings).
Built at a rapid pace – some in a matter of weeks – the timber structures were quickly assembled and surprisingly robust. Their lack of insulation, however, led to frequent complaints from employees about sweltering heat in summer and frigid conditions in winter. Most structures incorporated courtyards to admit light and promote air circulation; when viewed from above, their orderly, block-like layouts made them look like bricks.
Despite the important work taking place inside these buildings, local media coverage often focused on their cafeterias. Because the site was considered remote, it was felt that “low-wage” workers had neither the time to go into town for lunch nor the means to buy nutritious meals. To address this, Mrs. Donald Gordon, known for running the Eight Bells Cafeteria for the Women’s Naval Auxiliary, was tasked with establishing cafeterias on site.
Menus and pricing were frequently noted in local newspapers and with proceeds going to the Red Cross, even modest price increases prompted allegations of profiteering. Mrs. Gordon defended the operation, noting that volunteer labour kept costs comparatively low. The controversy peaked in May 1943, when employees in Building 5 protested the rise in meal prices – from 35 cents to about 50 cents – and argued that the cafeteria ought to serve and support war workers rather than function as a fundraising arm for the Red Cross.
Allegations of rudeness from Mrs. Gordon and her staff further fuelled the debate, with some volunteer cafeteria workers countering that they were not prepared to give their services for free to provide low-cost meals to disgruntled, discourteous employees. It all culminated in Mrs. Gordon’s abrupt resignation from the Building 5 cafeteria – a sensational topic in local papers, sparking letters to the editor and heated public debate.
Coverage of the cafeterias also provided insight into the employees working in the buildings. In 1945, for example, it was reported that 700 government employees were served lunch in Building 5 daily. Initially, Air Force and Army staff were the building’s primary occupants. Some Air Force staff were removed from the building in 1944 to make way for the newly formed Veterans Affairs department and the Ottawa District Income Tax Office. By war’s end, civilian departments like unemployment services, the Auditor’s Department and Ottawa’s Emergency Shelter had moved in. Post-war rumours about turning the space into housing for homeless veterans proved unfounded, and civilian office use expanded further to include employees from the entomology branch of Agriculture, the Taxation Data Centre and the Insurance Branch.
Building 8 was larger, housing approximately 4,600 at its peak. The Air Force was a significant tenant along with Veterans Affairs, Geological Survey and the Bureau of Statistics, among other departments. Controversy flared again in 1956 over the site’s “unreasonable remoteness,” this time sparked by the relocation of the Patent Office to Building 8, which made visiting the search rooms markedly more difficult.
By 1979, the government deemed these temporary buildings obsolete and no longer required. Both were sold to Quebec-based companies interested in salvaging the old-growth cedar timber. After a fire due to suspected arson, the buildings were demolished in 1980. The government promised in a cabinet decree that the land would always remain open space. Building 5’s site, later a National Capital Commission parking lot, was slated for sodding (which apparently never happened), while Building 8, which was supposed to return to the Central Experimental Farm, became Queen Juliana Park. Both the park and the parking lot disappeared to make space for the new hospital parking garage.
Sue Stefko is vice-president of the Glebe Annex Community Association and a regular contributor to the Glebe Report.