somerset street prototype

Poles poles poles . . .

675 and 671 Somerset Street West

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These businesses are located on the northwest corner of Bronson Avenue which is an important crossroads for the communities who use this street, The pizzeria occupies the place that the "La Roma" Italian restaurant was about 25 years ago . It was a very popular restaurant that is still missed by many long time residents in the neighbourhood.

761 Somerset Street

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Somerset street west online is a visual history project

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The Northern Han restaurant at 870 Somerset.

You can contribute to this blog by leaving comments about the places you see here.

The pictures seen here are from a large body of work that I have been working on since 1999.  I have photographed almost every building on Somerset Street between Bank Street and Wellington Street.

My personal connection with the street is straightforward - I lived in the neighbourhood for a few years, knocked on a lot of doors as an enumerator for two elections and I still live nearby, buy groceries here and eat in the restaurants on the street. This part of Ottawa fascinates me as architecture, culture and historical process. The more I have looked at the street with a camera the richer it has appeared to me as a metaphor for Ottawa's and a Canadian experience. During the last 40 years it has been "colonized"  by diverse groups of new Canadians. This place has somehow escaped the urban renewal/city planning steamrollers that cut down other mature neighbourhoods and replaced them with the new. Perhaps the street evaded development because it is too geographically extended or ethnically diverse or maybe it was just not valuable enough to be a good candidate for investment?  I don't know. Sadly, the biggest engine of change on the street at the moment seems to be fire.

I have really enjoyed watching how the street's aging and eclectic mix of vernacular commercial architecture, older apartment blocks and re-purposed homes have evolved and been changed by the people who use it. There is an unstructured and chaotic aspect to this street and I believe that this organic nature keeps it contemporary and relevant to the communities who use it.  As a photographer I have also enjoyed the simple pleasure of learning about this place by using my eyes.This project has been as a way to re-connect myself to a documentary process of working with cameras as a matter of fact that I have not engaged in for a long time.

Although this project visually emphasizes the buildings, people appear in many of the images. These people are un-named as a practical matter but they are not being trivialized in the process. They have left marks and traces everywhere I look. The people and the street need each other.

A selection of about 50 prints  will be displayed as a solo exhibition at the Bytown Museum in Ottawa until November 2009 . The gallery installation includes an internet connection so that visitors can access this blog and contribute their comments and anecdotes  to this online archive .  You can see how the exhibition is installed by clicking here. Everyone's input is valued.

Justin Wonnacott

Movie night in Dundonald Park at 512 Somerset Street

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There are free movies in the park each Friday and Saturday night all summer . Centretown movies are the sponsor, they use a DVD projector, a long extension cord and sometimes collaborate  with the Ottawa Folk Festival to have a live music prelude. The movie shown on the night of this photograph was a "Bollywood" classic called ROJA which is a musical . The plot deals with a Tamil Village girl , a handsome city boy, an arranged marriage and some derring do in Kashmir.

You can see the summer schedule here.

a retailer for herbal teas and a video store at 683 and 681 Somerset

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1108 -1110 Somerset is a rooming house

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Christ the Saviour Orthodox Church is at 721 Somerset Street west

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This church changed hands - the present congregation moved in here in 2003. There are many churches on this neighbourhood, two on the oppposite side of the street and immediately north on Empress Avenue is a Dominican monastery . The "Nanny Goat Hill " area on the escarpment above the old Lebreton Flats between Booth and Cambridge street has many other church properties too.

The Wa Kiu Foods at 713 Somerset at Arthur street

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Wa Kiu Foods has a barbeque service - an important attraction for a large grocery store to have.

On the left side of the photograph the dome of Christ the Saviour Orthodox Church is just visible, on the right side a cross can be seen on the old  Holy Trinity Orthodox Bukowinian Cathedral hall.

A tiny billiard club at 811

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Inside this small, unnamed club is one billiard table . This is not a pool table, or a snooker table. It is a classic billiard table with no pockets which I normally associate with continental Europe - and southeast asia. The people who play here are mostly Vietnamese.

Tables like this are not common here, I like to play pool and I have only seen 2 other tables in public clubs in Ottawa, and one of them is in a Vietnamese internet cafe/computer gaming club. Billiards is a very difficult game to play well.