Church of the Ascension, Ottawa — Deanery of Central Ottawa

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if context in most situations is everything, setting may also reveal a great deal. It is no accident that this 1920s photograph of the new Church of the Ascension features the Rideau Canal in the foreground. That setting was the only thing that this parish had in common with its beginnings.

This photograph of the Church of the Ascension dates from the second quarter of the 20th century. But Ascension’s history begins much earlier than that. It started out as a small brick church named Holy Trinity, Archville, built in 1877 near where the main cut of the Rideau Canal in downtown Ottawa near the University of Ottawa turns southward to wend its way to Dow’s Lake and the navigable part of the Rideau River. Holy Trinity was unique among Anglican churches built in late Victorian Ottawa for featuring rounded arches, as opposed to pointed ones.

The first rector appointed to Holy Trinity, Archville, appropriately enough, was a well-rounded individual, the Reverend Thomas Dowell Phillipps. Note the 3 ps. He had trained for the Anglican ministry, but he also was a teacher of some repute as shown by his being the mathematical master at the Ottawa Collegiate Institute (Lisgar Collegiate). He had other talents.  So proficient was he at playing cricket that on his 80th birthday he made a century—which in the arcane lingo of that sport means he batted a hundred runs, no mean achievement.

The arrival of the Rev. Robert Jefferson as rector in 1916, came at a critical time. The growing congregation in a small church, lacked room to expand. They faced up to the challenge of building a larger house of worship amid wartime restrictions. This new much larger building was built within parish boundaries on a site overlooking the Rideau Canal in 1916. The bell for Ascension is said to have come from a locomotive on J.R. Booth’s Canada Atlantic Railway.

From this view we can see that the Gothic Revival design favoured by Anglicans had been pared down to a practical (as opposed to steeply pitched) roof that did not rise high above the perpendicular windows. The parish hall was located beneath the house of worship. We see the church here from the west, with its great west window already filled with stained glass.

The new name, Church of the Ascension, was chosen because there was another Holy Trinity church in the city. The more spacious new setting conformed with the policy of the Federal District Commission (forerunner of today’s NCC) of having appropriate private and cultural buildings prominently featured on the new parkways being built in Ottawa. The fencing and mowed turf along the canal spoke to this development. The willow tree and lilac bush in the foreground probably both had been planted by the FDC at the turn of the century. Even so, even in this view, there were railway tracks running along the side of the canal to link up with Union Station downtown. Beside the church, we see the rectory for the Church of the Ascension.

Bucolic setting aside, it would be a long painful slog for the parish to pay off the debt of building this church in wartime conditions. It was not until 9 May 1956, that the Church of the Ascension was consecrated by Bishop Ernest S. Reed.

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