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Judy Cosenzo turned 16 on July 25, 1964, a Saturday, and her family celebrated with a party that evening at their home at 31 Lett St., in LeBreton Flats. Her oldest brother, John, his wife, Margaret, and their children, who lived just across the street and down a few doors at 22 Lett, took part, as did some of Judy’s other siblings and relatives.
They had pasta for supper, and, to mark such a special occasion, a store-bought birthday cake for dessert. Judy wore a blue blouse and pleated skirt, and remembers scarcely seeing the living-room floor as her older brother Frankie Jr. spun her around to the music of Elvis Presley and Bill Haley.
She doesn’t recall any of her friends attending the party, though. “They had all moved away by then,” she says.
Emma Belle Cosenzo with children John, Frankie and Jeanie, on Lett Street in LeBreton Flats in 1943.
A week later, on Aug. 1, Judy and her family moved to Spruce Street, while John and Margaret and their brood left for nearby Rochester Street. They were the last families to leave the Flats. All their neighbours who lived between their two houses – the Zacconis, Rivets, Moores and Milks, the Tavernas, Craigs and Jim Dodds, had already left, taking their backyard chickens and basement wine-making with them. Even Joss and Rose Pasqua, who ran Pasqua’s Confectionery at the corner of Ottawa Street, where you could get an entire wheel of parmesan cheese, were gone.
Two years earlier, in April 1962, the federal government announced it was expropriating the Flats to make way for a new Department of National Defence headquarters — the Pentagon of the North, it was dubbed. The announcement, Judy believes, was a contributing factor in her father, Frank’s death of a heart attack in 1963.
But by the summer of ’64, any misgivings they might have harboured about the expropriation had largely dissipated on piles of debris and clouds of dust.
“The houses would come down as people left,” recalls Laura Cosenzo (now Andrusek), the eldest of John and Margaret’s five children and nine years old when her family left the Flats. “I can remember walking to school. The industry was behind us as I walked south, and it was like … empty.
“But after all the houses being torn down, anywhere would have been better than that, because there were no kids to play with anymore.”
“The houses,” adds Judy — now McLellan, “were flattened. It was basically rubble.”
Related
Until the expropriation notice, the Flats was a tightly knit community, a mixture of residential, commercial and industrial buildings. The quieter streets teemed with children playing, while the back yards and alleyways were littered with cars either being worked on by their owners or abandoned.
The houses there abutted the sidewalks. When the Exhibition parade made its way through the Flats from Hull to Lansdowne Park, excited youngsters watched from up close.
Residents knew and looked out for one another. “It was a neighbourhood,” recalls Laura. “Everyone knew everyone else. You played outside. You weren’t supervised. You just went out.”
“And you knew,” cautions Judy, “that if you did anything wrong, it’d get to your parents before you got home. It was a real neighbourhood. You don’t get that anymore.”
Frank Cosenzo in 1952 in LeBreton Flats. His son John made the hat badge for him.
After his tile business faltered in the Second World War, Judy’s father, Frank, started a taxi business — Frank’s Taxi — with a fleet of one. Customers called the house, at CE5-6326, where his wife, Emmabelle, and children knew to answer the phone by saying “Frank’s Taxi.” They’d write down the caller’s name and address, and then phone the Prescott Hotel on Preston Street, where whoever answered would relay the information to Frank, who ran his business from a small booth adjacent to the hotel. If Frank wasn’t in his booth or out with a fare, he might be in the bar, chatting with the boys, rarely but sometimes with a rye in his hand. He seldom drank, although the Sunday spaghetti dinner was the occasional exception, when he might cut a glass of red wine with cream soda.
Some of his customers were regulars: two women who worked at the Grace hospital, for example, one afflicted so severely with arthritis that she needed crutches to walk. And a pair of sisters – of the Catholic variety — who lived at the Saint-Jean-Baptiste convent on Empress Avenue and taught at Our Lady of Perpetual Help School on Eccles Street, where Judy, Laura and their siblings attended. Judy believed that it helped her standing there that her father drove the nuns to and from school.
But by the time the expropriation began, she was in high school, at Commerce, located then in the same building with Glebe Collegiate, at Carling and Bronson.
“I could have taken a bus from Spruce Street,” she recalls, “but I used to keep that money for cigarettes, from Frieda’s, on Gladstone. Two for a nickel. It was a confectionery-restaurant, with booths. We would go there for French fries and a coke. And we could smoke there, and buy cigarettes. Player’s, I think. And that was after we’d been rolling them in the garage at Brazeau’s, when we were about 12.”
By then, the Flats was looking tired and rundown. The houses, most of them built to no particular code following the great fire of 1900, were showing their age, and residents typically didn’t have much money for maintenance, let alone renovations. The Greber Report, meanwhile, recommended eliminating the heavy industry and railroad tracks from Ottawa’s core, which meant that much of the Flats, including its housing, was doomed.
Judy Cosenzo and her family grew up at 31 Lett Street, second from right, in LeBreton Flats. (
“I think if they had given people a choice,” says Laura, “most would have been happy to stay there.”
But it was time. While the Flats might not have been the filthy slum that planners described it as, it was on its way.
“But it was a good neighbourhood,” says Judy. “People looked out for one another and helped each other. It was a waste to put people out of their homes.”
These days, Laura lives in the Carlington area, while Judy lives in Carleton Place. Judy still stays in touch with an old friend from the Flats, but admits she rarely drives by the once-vibrant neighbourhood.
“It used to depress me to think that it had changed so much, and I had so much fun there and met so many people. There was a lot of love and caring.”
Laura recalls when the first condos were built on Lett Street, in 2008, and thinking at the time that it might be nice to live there again. “But it was like a ghost town. It would be like being the last people there again.
“So I’m hoping that whatever proposal they do, it gets done. And it’s affordable. Where’s the affordable housing? I’m afraid that’s going to be the last piece of the puzzle, or not one at all.
“But that’s the last piece of prime real estate. They’d better do a good job.”
“It would nice to see families there,” adds Judy. “A lot of values came out of there.”
Photos: LeBreton Flats, before
We visit with locals who remember the LeBreton Flats before expropriation and gentrification, which began in the early 1960s.
bdeachman@postmedia.com
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They had pasta for supper, and, to mark such a special occasion, a store-bought birthday cake for dessert. Judy wore a blue blouse and pleated skirt, and remembers scarcely seeing the living-room floor as her older brother Frankie Jr. spun her around to the music of Elvis Presley and Bill Haley.
She doesn’t recall any of her friends attending the party, though. “They had all moved away by then,” she says.
Emma Belle Cosenzo with children John, Frankie and Jeanie, on Lett Street in LeBreton Flats in 1943.
A week later, on Aug. 1, Judy and her family moved to Spruce Street, while John and Margaret and their brood left for nearby Rochester Street. They were the last families to leave the Flats. All their neighbours who lived between their two houses – the Zacconis, Rivets, Moores and Milks, the Tavernas, Craigs and Jim Dodds, had already left, taking their backyard chickens and basement wine-making with them. Even Joss and Rose Pasqua, who ran Pasqua’s Confectionery at the corner of Ottawa Street, where you could get an entire wheel of parmesan cheese, were gone.
Two years earlier, in April 1962, the federal government announced it was expropriating the Flats to make way for a new Department of National Defence headquarters — the Pentagon of the North, it was dubbed. The announcement, Judy believes, was a contributing factor in her father, Frank’s death of a heart attack in 1963.
But by the summer of ’64, any misgivings they might have harboured about the expropriation had largely dissipated on piles of debris and clouds of dust.
“The houses would come down as people left,” recalls Laura Cosenzo (now Andrusek), the eldest of John and Margaret’s five children and nine years old when her family left the Flats. “I can remember walking to school. The industry was behind us as I walked south, and it was like … empty.
“But after all the houses being torn down, anywhere would have been better than that, because there were no kids to play with anymore.”
“The houses,” adds Judy — now McLellan, “were flattened. It was basically rubble.”
Related
•
Until the expropriation notice, the Flats was a tightly knit community, a mixture of residential, commercial and industrial buildings. The quieter streets teemed with children playing, while the back yards and alleyways were littered with cars either being worked on by their owners or abandoned.
The houses there abutted the sidewalks. When the Exhibition parade made its way through the Flats from Hull to Lansdowne Park, excited youngsters watched from up close.
Residents knew and looked out for one another. “It was a neighbourhood,” recalls Laura. “Everyone knew everyone else. You played outside. You weren’t supervised. You just went out.”
“And you knew,” cautions Judy, “that if you did anything wrong, it’d get to your parents before you got home. It was a real neighbourhood. You don’t get that anymore.”
Frank Cosenzo in 1952 in LeBreton Flats. His son John made the hat badge for him.
After his tile business faltered in the Second World War, Judy’s father, Frank, started a taxi business — Frank’s Taxi — with a fleet of one. Customers called the house, at CE5-6326, where his wife, Emmabelle, and children knew to answer the phone by saying “Frank’s Taxi.” They’d write down the caller’s name and address, and then phone the Prescott Hotel on Preston Street, where whoever answered would relay the information to Frank, who ran his business from a small booth adjacent to the hotel. If Frank wasn’t in his booth or out with a fare, he might be in the bar, chatting with the boys, rarely but sometimes with a rye in his hand. He seldom drank, although the Sunday spaghetti dinner was the occasional exception, when he might cut a glass of red wine with cream soda.
Some of his customers were regulars: two women who worked at the Grace hospital, for example, one afflicted so severely with arthritis that she needed crutches to walk. And a pair of sisters – of the Catholic variety — who lived at the Saint-Jean-Baptiste convent on Empress Avenue and taught at Our Lady of Perpetual Help School on Eccles Street, where Judy, Laura and their siblings attended. Judy believed that it helped her standing there that her father drove the nuns to and from school.
But by the time the expropriation began, she was in high school, at Commerce, located then in the same building with Glebe Collegiate, at Carling and Bronson.
“I could have taken a bus from Spruce Street,” she recalls, “but I used to keep that money for cigarettes, from Frieda’s, on Gladstone. Two for a nickel. It was a confectionery-restaurant, with booths. We would go there for French fries and a coke. And we could smoke there, and buy cigarettes. Player’s, I think. And that was after we’d been rolling them in the garage at Brazeau’s, when we were about 12.”
By then, the Flats was looking tired and rundown. The houses, most of them built to no particular code following the great fire of 1900, were showing their age, and residents typically didn’t have much money for maintenance, let alone renovations. The Greber Report, meanwhile, recommended eliminating the heavy industry and railroad tracks from Ottawa’s core, which meant that much of the Flats, including its housing, was doomed.
Judy Cosenzo and her family grew up at 31 Lett Street, second from right, in LeBreton Flats. (
“I think if they had given people a choice,” says Laura, “most would have been happy to stay there.”
But it was time. While the Flats might not have been the filthy slum that planners described it as, it was on its way.
“But it was a good neighbourhood,” says Judy. “People looked out for one another and helped each other. It was a waste to put people out of their homes.”
These days, Laura lives in the Carlington area, while Judy lives in Carleton Place. Judy still stays in touch with an old friend from the Flats, but admits she rarely drives by the once-vibrant neighbourhood.
“It used to depress me to think that it had changed so much, and I had so much fun there and met so many people. There was a lot of love and caring.”
Laura recalls when the first condos were built on Lett Street, in 2008, and thinking at the time that it might be nice to live there again. “But it was like a ghost town. It would be like being the last people there again.
“So I’m hoping that whatever proposal they do, it gets done. And it’s affordable. Where’s the affordable housing? I’m afraid that’s going to be the last piece of the puzzle, or not one at all.
“But that’s the last piece of prime real estate. They’d better do a good job.”
“It would nice to see families there,” adds Judy. “A lot of values came out of there.”
Photos: LeBreton Flats, before
We visit with locals who remember the LeBreton Flats before expropriation and gentrification, which began in the early 1960s.
Frankie Cosenzo, Maggie Jubinville (Cosenzo), Albert Craig and Jeanie Cosenzo (in car) on Lett Street in LeBreton Flats in 1950.
John and Margaret Cosenzo lived at 22 Lett Street in LeBreton Flats, the second home from the left.
Frankie Cosenzo Jr. on Lett Street in LeBreton Flats in 1946.
Emmabelle Cosenzo, top left, stands on the front porch of her Lett Street house in 1941 with some neighbourhood children, including Rosie Cuccaro, directly beside her, and Cosenzo's daughter Jeanie, middle.
Frank Cosenzo in 1952 in LeBreton Flats. His son John made the hat badge for him.
Judy Cosenzo and her family grew up at 31 Lett Street, second from right, in LeBreton Flats. (
A back alley in LeBreton Flats in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
Emma Belle Cosenzo with children John, Frankie and Jeanie, on Lett Street in LeBreton Flats in 1943.
From left, Cora and Peggy Milks with Emmabelle Cosenzo on Lett Street in LeBreton Flats, 1945.
The aquaduct at LeBreton Flats, photographed in 2010.
Laura Cosenzo's mother, Margaret, stands alongside the aquaduct at LeBreton Flats in 1952.
Raymond Lauzon's convocation photo, from Ste. Famille Separate School in LeBreton Flats in 1938. Lauzon is second from the right in the middle row.
Lew Seville Hardware and Safety Vermin Control were located at 98-100 Fleet Street in LeBreton Flats.
A class photo of Ray Lauzon's, from when he lived in LeBreton Flats in the 1930s.
Al La Porter Enterprises, on Ottawa Street in LeBreton Flats, sold and maintained vending machines.
Baker Brothers, at Booth and Duke streets in LeBreton Flats, was the largest of numerous scrap dealers in the neighbourhood.
bdeachman@postmedia.com
查看原文...
