Some historical insight into Lowertown’s 180-year history of poverty.

ByTown.net tells the story of how Lowertown got its largest building complex: the Bruyere Hospital. It began with a cholera outbreak that hit Ottawa in 1832. Because Lowertown housed so many of the city’s poor people and was so unsanitary, this outbreak quickly took hold here. Lowertown was “ravaged,” and apparently the Board of Health never followed up on its recommendations that the community be cleaned up. By 1845, the population was much larger, but Lowertown “still lived in the same squalid conditions.” ByTown.net continues, “Although a major outbreak such as the cholera one had not since occurred, there were still many reported illnesses such as malaria (most likely due to the filthy state of the Bywash and the cesspool of breeding mosquitos). On a whole, the lower class in Lowertown, which was a large part of the population, was in a sorry state.” It was into this need that a group of Catholic nuns began to build the complex - just in time for a typhus epidemic in 1847. Once again, Lowertown’s poor were hit hardest. Officials did their best to sanction the community off from the rest of the city. “There were so many sick that the sheds became overcrowded and people were forced to sleep under boats and tents. … By the end of the typhus epidemic, nearly all the Sisters’ volunteers had quit and a great many of the Nuns themselves were ill, but they still managed to treat ‘619 typhus victims, of whom 167 died’.” Later on, a booming population and a major outbreak of influenza in 1917 led to the building of the Bruyere Hospital that stands in Lowertown today.

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