Ottawa bridge may be named after Corktown

A controversial pedestrian bridge over the Rideau Canal may be named in memory of a forgotten segment of Bytown, the crowded, noisy and sometimes raunchy Corktown.

The bridge connecting Somerset Street West and the University of Ottawa has been debated for years. Critics say it is too close to existing bridges to be worthwhile, and the $5-million construction project has been an unnecessary expense.

But now the Bytown Museum and the Ottawa and District Labour Council want Ottawa City Council to name the structure the Corktown Bridge, after the area where thousands of Irish squatterslivedduring the digging of the Rideau Canal.

The rough and tumble Corktown shanty area was dismantled in the 1850s when canal workers finished the project and moved on to other jobs, many in construction or Canada's booming lumber industry.

Steve Dezort, the Bytown Museum's program manager, has been campaigning for the name for months to commemorate "the working people who really built this city."

"It's often the prominent people in history, the leaders and the prime ministers who are remembered, but a lot of these working class people, their stories have been lost," Dezort said. "We thought it would be a good chance to tell one of the stories of Bytown and have it commemorated."

Construction of the canal started in 1826 using thousands of poor immigrant workers, who lived in lean-to shacks on the banks of the canal. The crowded shantytown soon spread from Somerset Street to the site of the National Arts Centre, developing a reputation for hard living, raunchy taverns and wild nights.

"It was very much the wildest, most red-lightiest district of town," Dezort said.

Council will name the bridge this fall after holding public consultations.