Rework wartime housing plan for today's world
Many homes still stand in Ottawa, says Tom Macgregor
Governments at the federal, provincial and municipal levels are trying to deal with the critical shortage of housing in this country. Federal Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Minister Sean Fraser recently floated the idea that Canada should follow the government's wartime housing strategy as a solution.
During the 1940s, when the federal government faced a crisis regarding war workers, returning veterans and their families, it created a new Crown corporation called Wartime Housing Limited, which ran from 1941 to 1947. With the veterans starting to return home, many with war brides and their children, these small homes became for many the first homes of the baby boomers.
“In many instances, these homes were being built in 36 hours and we intend to take these lessons from our history books and bring them into the 21st century,” Fraser said.
There were bungalows and one-and-a-halfand two-storey homes that the government would have liked to have called “Victory Homes” or “Homes for Heroes.” However, public opinion tended to call them “strawberry box homes” because they resembled the square boxes that strawberries came in at the time.
The houses had steeply pitched roofs, clapboard walls, small sash windows and a metal chimney stack. There would be between one and three bedrooms. The street names in these neighbourhoods tended to have a military flavour, such as Marshall, Admiral and Veteran.
During this period, nearly 26,000 rental units were built across Canada, especially in British Columbia, Ontario and Nova Scotia. They were often near military bases or large industrial employers. The company was later merged to form the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, now the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
In Ottawa, wartime housing can be found in the Carlington, Alta Vista, Vanier, Overbrook
In many instances, these homes were being built in 36 hours.
and Elmvale areas.
In 2021, the City of Ottawa conducted a study of the remaining wartime housing in the Carlington North subdivision. The study area is bounded by Carling Avenue to the north, Anna and Fisher avenues on the east, General and Marshall avenues to the south and Merivale Road to the west. It includes about 400 homes. Originally, the homes were built on large lots so the tenants could grow food and raise livestock. The study documented all the buildings and studied the streetscape character of the neighbourhood.
In 2022, the city recognized the area as a “cultural heritage character area,” although the designation is short of being a heritage district, which would be protected under the Ontario Heritage Act.
The study especially recognized Harrold Place Park, near the Westgate Shopping Mall, a public green space named after E.W. Harrold, a First World War veteran who had been gassed while fighting at Passchendaele in Belgium in 1917. Harrold returned to Ottawa where he became a writer and editor at the Ottawa Citizen and wrote a popular column on daily life in the capital. He died just as the first houses were being built.
The plans would have to be tweaked by engineers to make sure they are up to date. As Fraser said. “The catalogue of pre-approved designs is going to be tied to existing building codes — the National Building Code, which we will seek to make changes to in the future — but will be designed to mirror the requirements of provincial building codes that are implemented across the country.”
The plan for wartime housing is there. It can be reworked without wasting time starting all over again.