NOTEBOOK: Taking stock of Stittsville Main Street

About 40 people joined us on Saturday for the annual Jane’s Walk on Stittsville Main Street. It was part of the Ottawa Jane’s Walk Festival with dozens of free walking tours happening all over Ottawa (and many more happening around the world).

This year’s walk focused on the history, present state, and future of the street, and how it has transformed from “string town” to suburb. I’ve been leading this walk since 2016, and over ten years I’ve seen a lot of change on the street: Several new buildings, a lot of new businesses, new LED streetlamps, a new public square.

After ten years, it’s a good opportunity to take stock of where we’ve been, and where we may be going.

Photos by Mandy Hambly, Marlova Martin, and Laura Mueller.

Stittsville’s origin story

Indigenous people have lived in our area for millennia. There’s no direct evidence that they settled or travelled on what’s now Stittsville Main Street*, but their presence in the area is well-established. In 2006, during the construction of Holy Spirit Parish 1,200 metres away at Shea and Abbott, archeologists discovered over 800 artifacts dating back 9,000 years.

(*I have no idea when the street was first referred to as “Main Street”. It started being known as “Stittsville Main Street” sometime around the municipal amalgamation in 2000. Throughout this article I’ve used modern street names for clarity, although several streets have had different names over the years.)

The first settler surveys in this area were done around 1817 when it was largely swamp and forest. The road that would become “Stittsville Main Street” left the military settlement of Richmond and forged northward, staying fairly straight save for a few curves to avoid low, swampy areas. The road would intersect with another road (now Hazeldean Road) that crossed the northern end of Goulbourn Township from east to west, between the 11^th and 12^th concessions.

From that crossroads, you could have headed south to Richmond, north to Carp, east to Hazeldean and Bells Corners, or west to Carleton Place. Up sprang a small settlement at around 1820 around the triangle bounded today by Stittsville Main Street, Hazeldean Road, and Carp Road. By the 1840s this settlement was known as “Stitts Corners”. Jackson Stitt became the settlement’s first postmaster in 1854.

The Great Fire blazes a new course

The Great Fire of August 1870 would change everything. On a windy day in the middle of a hot, dry summer, workers clearing the brush between Almonte and Pakenham for a new railway sparked a fire that devastated much of Carleton County. Almost everything in Stittsville was destroyed, save for a few stone buildings including two that still stand today: Kemp’s Tavern (now Cabotto’s on Hazeldean Road) and the little stone cottage on Maple Grove Road in Fairwinds.

The railway eventually was completed, following what’s now the Trans Canada Trail, along with a train station in Stittsville just east of the main road – now the site of Village Square Park. The centre of Stittsville shifted from the old “Stitts Corners” towards the train station, and a number of shops, hotels, and local businesses sprang up in the late 19^th century and early 20^th centuries.

A “string town”

It’s hard to imagine from today’s perspective, but for most of Stittsville’s history the main street was not only the main road, but also one of the *only* roads in the community. The community was referred to as a “string town”, meaning that most of its buildings and institutions were along one very long street, with very few cross-streets or secondary roads.

The first subdivision was created in 1901 with several homes back-to-back on Abbott Street and Manchester Street, west of Main Street. Additional subdivisions didn’t come until after the Second World War.

That linear layout makes the street quite different than other “traditional main streets” in our area. It lacks the grid-like structure and intersections of the Glebe or Westboro, and it’s way less compact than old main streets in Carleton Place or Almonte. It remained very much rural in character until well into the 20^th century.

Post-war ambition

The people who lived in Stittsville immediately following WWII were an ambitious bunch. In the late 1940s they opened a new elementary school (Stittsville Public School, now Frederick Banting Secondary Alternative School and home to the Home Bosses Youth Centre). It was a model of a modern elementary school and school board officials from across the province came to visit. At about the same time the community established a Board of Trade, and an Urban Development Area – a first stab at a master plan and zoning for the village.

In 1956 Stittsville became a “Police Village”, which gave decision-making and budget powers to local elected officials, within the broader Goulbourn Township. By the early 1960s, Stittsville was recognized formally as a “village”.

This period also marked the start of suburban growth and car commuting, with Stittsville a convenient distance from jobs in Ottawa. The first post-war subdivisions were established in the older parts of Stittsville on large lots, due to the need for wells and septic. Streets like Pretty and Ralphpark, Henry Goulbourn and Norway Spruce, Coach and Conductor, Brigade and Bell Park, just to name a few.

Through the 60s and 70s Stittsville welcomed new churches, a community centre and arena (Johnny Leroux Arena), a post office, a fire hall, a library, all along (or very close to) Stittsville Main Street. Goulbourn Non-Profit Housing built a two-storey affordable apartment building on Carleton Cathcart.

In the late 1970s, the town council decided to connect the village to municipal water and sewage. That, combined with construction of the Queensway to the west end in the 1980s, would eventually shift Stittsville’s focus away from Main Street towards the close of the century.

End of the railway

The last VIA Rail train travelled through Stittsville in January 1990, making the end of nearly 120 years of rail. Soon the tracks would be torn up, the rail buildings demolished, and the crossing arms removed from Main Street.

In 1991, work began to upgrade Main Street. The $8-million project was funded by the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton and Goulbourn Township, and included burying hydro lines, building sidewalks on both sides of the street, and boulevards, trees, and street lamps.

In 1996 the site of the old train station was redeveloped as Village Square Park, including the first version of the railway-themed play structure. (The second generation of the play structure opened in 2024.) The old rail lines were removed and the Trans Canada Trail was established by 2000, connecting from Bells Corners to Carleton Place.

There’s an old painting by Ben Babelowsky at City Hall capturing Stittsville as it looked around 1999-2000. Looking northward from about where the pedestrian crosswalk is now, it depicts a colourful collection of small two-storey buildings, a mix of shops and restaurants, and a local police station.

The painting is one of a collection of depictions of cities and townships before they were amalgamated into the City of Ottawa in 2000.

A planning crisis and the Community Design Plan

With amalgamation, “Main Street” became “Stittsville Main Street” to differentiate it from all the other ones across Ottawa. Amalgamation also coincided with the start of an economic decline on the street, despite continuing residential growth overall in the community.

I think there were a few factors at play here: Stittsville’s residential development was shifting north, west, and south. Newer retail pads built in the 1990s and 2000s on the north end of Stittsville Main and along Hazeldean Road shifted the retail centre of the community northward. A few of the older buildings burned down.

Around 2010, a proposed mixed-use apartment building and townhomes next to the Stittsville Legion sparked an uproar. At five storeys, it would have been the tallest building on the street in one of the narrowest sections. After a few twists and turns, the townhomes were built, the apartment building was not, and part of the lot remains for sale today.

But that development would still have a major impact. Responding to community interest, former councillor Shad Qadri launched a “Community Design Plan” process for Stittsville Main Street. Approved in 2015, it provided a blueprint for future development on the street from Hazeldean Road to Bobcat Way. The vision was for a vibrant neighbourhood with more homes, businesses and services in old and new buildings. It included a four-storey height limit; a preference for mixed use (retail on the bottom, apartments on top); and highlighting opportunities for community enhancements (public art at the corner of Carleton Cathcart; a public square at the trail south of Abbott; acquiring Frederick Banting school for city recreational use should it ever go up for sale).

Revitalization begins

The plan estimated that Stittsville Main had the capacity for about 2,200 housing units between 2015-2031. More than a decade on, we’re nowhere near the target, but there have been several developments:

The Switzer (1531 Stittsville Main) – 43 apartments, opened 2022
The Landing (1370 Stittsville Main) – 71 apartments, opened 2025
The Station (1518 Stittsville Main) – 27 apartments, under construction
1412 Stittsville Main – 18 apartments, under construction

All of these were permitted “as of right” under the Community Design Plan and required no rezoning. Each of them (except for 1412 Stittsville Main) includes retail on the ground floor and apartments above. Together, that’s just over 150 apartments.

(We could also include the 37 Wildpine apartment development just off of Stittsville Main, with 93 apartments. It’s still going through the approval process.)

Besides housing, there’s been a large crop of new businesses opening up on the street. Most of them are independently owned and operated, taking advantage of cheaper rents in older buildings. The street has become an incubator for a score of women-owned and diversity-owned businesses. Restaurants, retail shops, and more. Jane Jacobs would approve.

Even the Stittsville Muslim Association has moved in, adapting the old Bradley’s Insurance building at 1469 Stittsville Main Street for a temporary mosque and school while they search for a larger property elsewhere in Stittsville.

In the first few years of my Jane’s Walk, we would stop on the porch of the old Green’s Hotel / Butler’s Hotel at the corner of Stittsville Main and Abbott. At the time, it was home to Hudson’s Insurance and I would talk about how great it would be to have a coffee shop or a brew pub open up. Today, it’s home to Ritual Café owned by Chinelo Houron – a popular stop for cyclists and walkers along the Trans Canada Trail.

Instead of stopping at the porch of the building, now we gather at Bradley’s Square. Completed in 2019 with main street stimulus funding from the provincial government, it was one of the projects identified in the 2015 community design plan, and renamed for the Bradley family’s historic contributions to Stittsville in 2022.

Looking down the road

Stittsville ward has about 55,000 people today, and will grow by another 25,000 in the coming decades. As far as Ottawa’s suburbs go, our main street is unique: the character, the mix of old and new, and the growing ranks of eclectic businesses.

One of the big challenges is transportation. Stittsville Main is somewhere between a road and a street: a “stroad”. It’s a road, in the sense that it’s an artery for vehicles heading north and south in the community. It’s a street, in the sense that it is lined with small shops and quite walkable.

In the future it will have to shift more towards a street, because neighbourhood-scale retail thrives on streets and struggles on roads. New roads like Robert Grant Avenue will deflect north-south traffic away from Stittsville Main. And the 2022 Public Realm Plan and subsequent 2025 Transportation Master Plan call for new sidewalks and pathways on both sides of the street – making it safer and more convenient for pedestrians and cyclists and connecting to the Trans Canada Trail. OC Transpo route 163 launched in 2025 and Route 61 service will become more frequent soon.

In the next few years Stittsville Main will be extended northward, connecting through Jackson Trails and Connections to Palladium Drive and then the Queensway. The old road to Carp will soon become a road to Kanata and beyond.

There will be new apartment buildings, both on the street and nearby. Thanks to the rural origins of the street, most lots are large and deep, making them ideal for housing and retail. The old firehall at Carleton Cathcart is due for a major rebuild, where the City will create a permanent home for the Stittsville Food Bank, likely along with affordable housing and community meeting rooms.

Meanwhile close to Hazeldean Road, new provincial policy has superseded the 4-storey limit established in the 2015 Stittsville Main Street Secondary Plan. Provincial rules mean that maximum heights are now 10-18 storeys between Hobin and Hazeldean. So if the strip malls or school board land ever gets redeveloped, we’re likely to see some taller mixed-use buildings.

Change is constant

I can’t remember where I heard or read it, but a smart urban planner observed that while land uses change over time, and buildings may come and go, the roads will always be there.

Walking up and down the road, you can see evidence of every part of Stittsville’s history. Architecture from many decades, and clues about the rural and railway history of the village. I wonder if the original surveyors and settlers of Goulbourn Township had any concept that the road they plotted north from Richmond Road to Concession Line XI would eventually become the backbone of a growing 21^st century suburb in the Nation’s Capital?

Ten years ago when I started the Jane’s Walk, Stittsville Main was at the very start of its modern revitalization. We’re still in the very early stages, it’s far from perfect, and there are some growing pains. But in new buildings like the Switzer or The Station, you can see a glimpse of where the street is going, and what it might become over the next 25 years.

I’ll see you around the neighbourhood.

Sources consulted for this article include: