It’s been an establishment in Ottawa for decades, but the early days of Parkdale Market were auspicious.
On the morning of July 10, 1924, about 200 women with baskets showed up at the new market with the logo at the corner of Parkdale and Wellington streets, according to an article published that same day in the Ottawa Journal.
They went out en masse to fill those baskets with fruits and vegetables, the newspaper notes, and allegedly “cleaned up the farmers’ load of produce in ten minutes. “
But there is a big problem: due to some bureaucratic errors, not a single farmer showed up.
“The city only gave one day’s notice for the opening,” the newspaper reported. “[But] it will be discontinued because of the poor effects of the first day. “
Even if there were more uncertainty in the years to come, this speculation would ultimately prove prophetic.
And this weekend, with a more varied clientele, tote bags with baskets and, yes, genuine farmers, the venerable Hintonburg Market will officially kick off its 100th season in the nation’s capital.
Saturday’s festivities will feature live music, speeches by dignitaries and the unveiling of a “commemorative luminary” committed to the family of Franco Spagnoli, the owner of Osgoode Orchard who had a stall at the market for six decades before retiring in 2023.
A big birthday is planned for July and on the last day of the season a new documentary will be screened.
Plans are also underway for a “pedestrian gallery” on Parkdale Avenue that will showcase photographs taken during the past century, said Tina Barton, Parkdale Market coordinator for the ByWard Market District Authority (BMDA).
“Of course, in the last hundred years people’s consumption behavior has changed,” says Barton, who in the past sold vegan ready-to-eat meals at the market.
“To see them still popping up week in and week out at a public market and interacting with their neighbors and small businesses. . . It’s special to look back at a full century of that in a neighborhood. It’s beautiful. “
But for decades, the Parkdale Market’s presence in Hintonburg has still not been secure.
“It’s this kind of tumultuous state that lasted almost its entire existence,” said Dave Allston, a local historian who runs the Kitchissippi Museum and is master of ceremonies for Saturday’s event.
The market opened in 1924 at the request of locals looking for an option in the bustling and hectic ByWard Market, said Allston, who conducted studies for the BMDA for the centennial.
The market was set up on the site of a former sawmill that the city rented each year from its Montreal landlord. Farmers weighed their produce in a “rickety old log cabin” with no heat on site, Allston said. Visitors to the market trudged along a wooden boardwalk that the town had installed on what was otherwise a dirt field.
In those early years, there was political opposition, Allston said, because the market wasn’t making money for the city.
Each year, the council would have to make a decision on whether it was worth leasing the land. And while they did, they also missed many opportunities to buy it outright, adding relatively low value during the Great Depression, Allston said.
It wasn’t until the 1940s that the town became a property owner, expropriating the land from the new owners and overpaying “$3,000 or $4,000” for it, he said.
“It’s kind of emblematic of how the city has done this. They procrastinate anything for too long and then do what they deserve to have done in the first place, and they have to pay more for it. “
“They’ve been visiting other people for years because of this. Residents feared he would disappear. Literally, year after year, they were asking, ‘Will it open or not?'”
In some ways, freehold ownership has made Parkdale Market’s long-term even more precarious.
For “a good 15 years,” Allston said, the city did anything else with the land it now owned, such as building an apartment for the elderly for the nearby Civic Hospital campus.
After Queensway’s arrival in the 1950s, a committee converted the market site into a car park, a concept that came close to being adopted, Allston said. When the Ottawa tram tracks were put into service, there was a message to move the market to the new Byron Avenue Area.
In a way, the story of the market embodies what Allston describes as the “never-ending battle” for urban services that are fantastic to have but essential.
“It’s political, is it rarely? There will be other people [who will say things like] ‘Oh, we shouldn’t waste money running a market,'” he said.
“Fortunately, we’ve had the right politician or network organization to combat it over the years. “
But that drive to protect Parkdale Market means it’s now a focal point of network growth in Hintonburg, and several providers say they’ve built strong connections with consumers who come to shop over the years.
“That’s what it’s all about,” said Kornel Schneider, who has run Dream Farm in Curran, Ontario, for 31 years and has worked in Parkdale for seven years.
“We want them to know about us,” Schneider said of his clients. “They may be asked how things are going on the farm, what their considerations are. . . They’ve already shown many times that they’re there for us when we want them to and I think we’re also looking to show [our customers] that we’ll be there to help them. “
It’s a similar sentiment at Robinson Greenhouses, where several generations from the same circle of relatives have maintained their stalls at the market over the years.
“Some [people] come on Monday, some on Tuesday, some on Wednesday. It’s normal,” said co-owner Brigitte Robinson, who hugged several shoppers passing by last week as she and her husband Michel set up their stall for the season.
“My aunt has been here forever. She belongs to the third generation. He’s noticed the young people, and the young people have grown up, they have parents and their young people have grown up. People come back year after year. “
Although year after year the Parkdale market is no longer in doubt, this means that there are still demanding situations to face.
Over the past decade, the design of the control has undergone many changes: the volunteer-run organization of Ottawa Markets got off to a rocky start in 2018 and then dissolved in favor of the BMDA several years later.
In the midst of all those changes, the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, which has altered everything on Earth, adding farmers’ markets.
For Parkdale Market, distance and other regulations have forced vendors to replace the way they operate: Consumers can no longer browse as freely as they once could, and transactions are conducted in a t-shape at the front of the booth. (For his part, Robinson says this has helped decrease damage and theft. )
The BMDA also introduced the Parkdale Night Market, the hippier sibling of the regular Wednesday night market, featuring artisans, music, and an occasional craft beer vendor, in the midst of the pandemic.
It’s the kind of fun Barton and Zachary Dayler, BMDA’s executive director, say other people craved.
“When normalcy disappears, it returns to the public space,” Dayler said. “Everyone was looking for [this]. They were looking for a position to be in, and the position in the public market provided it. “
The big challenge on the horizon, Dayler said, will be finding tactics to stay in the Parkdale market, where any produce sold will have to be grown in Canada, either affordable or “accessible. “a cost-of-living crisis that has caused the costs of many essential items to skyrocket.
That’s why Dayler and Barton are vital to maintaining the detail of the market’s “meeting space,” allowing other people to gather there without feeling stressed about spending money.
“Costs are going up. Everybody’s under pressure and tense,” Dayler said. “So I think it’s a wonderful time for Parkdale. It’s a wonderful time for public space, because we’re passing out and we’re becoming together.
“If we restrict the area and move in the direction of advertising, it won’t be a public area. This is not the future. “
Assigned Producer/Reporter
Trevor Pritchard is a virtual journalist and weekend project producer at CBC Ottawa. It was previously reported in Toronto, Saskatoon, and Cornwall, Ontario.
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