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Carleton Place Heritage Project - Part 2

The Coming of the Railway and the Mississippi Hotel (1853-1900)

          On July 21st, 1853, newspaper editor James C. Poole announced the coming of the Brockville and Ottawa Railroad to Carleton Place. In the morning edition of the Carleton Place Herald, he wrote:

“We rejoice to be able to announce that the By-law of the County Council, loaning the credit of the County to the Brockville and Ottawa Railway Company, has been heartily supported by the people in the different municipalities. The inhabitants of this ‘city’, elated at the success which had attended the railroad scheme thus far, turned out en masse and had a regular rejoicing.”[1]

          The railroad had been a matter of discussion for some time. Bytown, today known as Ottawa, was increasing in size and importance as a centre of commerce and industry. As a transportational link between Toronto and Montréal, the boomtown was overdue for a rail connection. In 1855 Bytown formally incorporated as a city, and, as the largest commercial centre in the Ottawa Valley, took the name of Ottawa. Carleton Place benefited from this success when their connection along the railroad was established in 1857; the line to Ottawa was completed a few years later in 1859.[2] The railroad's commercial importance was immediately recognized by all residents living along it. In Carleton Place, advertisements soon began to appear in the local papers, reporting the delivery of fresh goods by this latest and fastest transportation technology. One posting in the Carleton Place Herald, by local businessman A. McArthur on June 30th, 1859, read:

“First Arrival by Railway Direct to Carleton Place!  Teas, Teas, part of the Cargo of the Ship ‘Gauntlet’, from China, 112 Boxes and 48 Catties – Also a large stock of Harvest Tools – Also by the same conveyance a further supply of fancy and staple Dry Goods and a very full assortment of Shelf Hardware, Crockery, etc.”[3]

          By the 1860s, Carleton Place was seeing major expansions, especially with the founding of industries like the Findlay Foundry in 1862. Those with investments in transportable goods benefited tremendously from the railroads presence. Textile mills were constructed, and so were machine shops for the manufacture of boat motors and iron engine parts. In just a few years, the population doubled, travelers began to pass through the town more regularly, and all of these new bodies needed somewhere to stay and socialize.[4] Local hoteliers responded to the demand, expanding to accommodate the influx. Some businessmen like Napoleon Lavallee profited from both the hotel boom and the transportation of goods, and were clever enough to see opportunities in the development of major current affairs.

          After the union of Upper and Lower Canada in 1841, the cities of Kingston, Montréal, Toronto and Québec were in competition for succession as the new seat of government. Canada needed a new capital, and it soon became clear that a deadlock between the contenders would delay the decision indefinitely. To circumvent this, the Government of Canada formally asked Queen Victoria to settle the debate in 1857, and to everyone’s surprise, she chose Ottawa. The reasoning for this decision was threefold: it was located halfway between Toronto and Montréal, it was situated along the border of English and French speaking territories, and, most importantly for the time, it was far from the American border.[5] This last point was important because Great Britain had been at war with America some forty years earlier, and now the States were experiencing severe civil unrest. In fact, these tensions would ultimately erupt into the American Civil War in 1861. With regard to the safety of the capital, it was remarked that “Ottawa could not be captured, for even the most courageous soldiers would get lost in the woods trying to find it.”[6] Ottawa was protected by an army of trees.

          Lavallee was well aware of these developments. His hotel had even hosted council meetings which, in response to tensions in the south, had formed a provisional defensive rifle company for Carleton Place.[7] With the establishment of Ottawa as the new capital, he would have known that larger companies would race to invest in the city's centralization, and it was not long before the Canada Central Railway Company (later part of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company) was negotiating the acquisition of the line through Carleton Place. This meant more trains, more goods, and more visitors for all towns along the major railway arteries, and Lavallee took his chance. In 1869 he secured the land for Carleton Place’s second hotel, and when, in late 1870, the Railway Company acquired and expanded the train service, his new hostelry was already underway.
          The Mississippi Hotel was built, not only in response to Carleton Place’s success and its proximity to Ottawa, but also physically out of materials that had helped the town succeed in the first place. In fact it shared many intimate connections with the town. The Beckwith limestone in which local businesses had invested was also shipped and processed for Napoleon Lavallee’s kilns, which produced lime of such quality that it was reportedly “carted off to help build some of the most prestigious buildings in the Nation’s Capital.”[8] These same materials, and the income they brought, were utilized in the construction of the Mississippi Hotel, completed in 1872. It's careful and decorative stonework no doubt aided its quickly growing reputation as “the best of the seven stopping places of the town.”[9] In addition to this, a local tributary to the Mississippi River was named after Napoleon Lavallee, called Lavallee Creek, and it may be argued that the subsequent naming of the Mississippi hotel symbolically reflects the symbiotic relationship that both Lavallee and the Hotel had with the land and their community.

          After Lavallee sold the hotel to Walter Clyde McIlquham in 1883, the hotel continued to grow. It was fed by a continuous stream of visitors, politicians, and businessmen travel ling on the Canadian Pacific Railway both to and from Ottawa. The hotel became so successful that by the following decade McIlquham was laying plans to refurbish and expand the building, and by the 1890s the hotel had doubled in size. The Mississippi Hotel had expanded westwards and upwards. It was given a new front door, central foyer, an additional floor, and a total of 60 guest rooms, all with new paint, woodwork, furnishings, and decorations. The sitting and public rooms were also enlarged, and new technologies like ‘hot water distributors’ made the hotel the cutting edge of luxury and comfort.[10] An omnibus service, in the form of horse-drawn buggies, was even created by the hotel to deliver guests and their luggage directly from the C.P.R. railway station.[11] The needs of travelers and tourists in contemporary hotel culture were rapidly expanding, and as the hotel grew to meet these needs, the Mississippi Hotel became well established as both a representative and centerpiece of Carleton Place.
               
            
Footnotes:
  1. “The Last Train,” found in Carleton Place Local History (blog), accessed February 20, 2022, url: https://carletonplacelocalhistory.wordpress.com/2012/10/.
     
  2. Library of Parliament (Canada), “Uncover the reason why Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the Canadian capital,” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2022, accessed February 10, 2022, url: https://www.britannica.com/video/187528/Victoria-capital-Ottawa-Canadian; Howard Morton Brown, “Carleton Place First County Town – Lights,” Carleton Place Canadian, May 21, 1959, found in Carleton Place Local History (blog), accessed February 22, 2022, url: https://carletonplacelocalhistory.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/sharing-memories-week-fourteen/.
     
  3. “The Last Train.”
     
  4. “Town History,” Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum, accessed February 15, 2022, url: http://www.cpbheritagemuseum.com/town-history.html.
     
  5. Library of Parliament (Canada), “Uncover the reason”; Parliament of Canada, “Why Ottawa?” found in Our Country, Our Parliament, Parliament of Canada Website, accessed February 16, 2022, url: https://lop.parl.ca/about/parliament/education/ourcountryourparliament/html_booklet/why-ottawa-e.html; Parks Canada, “Canada’s Capital National Historic Event,” Parks Canada Directory of Federal Heritage Designations, accessed February 16, 2022, url: https://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/page_nhs_eng.aspx?id=1578.
     
  6. Library of Parliament (Canada), “Uncover the reason.”
     
  7. Howard Morton Brown, “Invasion Threatened When Local Units Trained,” Carleton Place Canadian, March 31, 1966, found in Carleton Place Local History (blog), accessed March 20, 2022, url: https://carletonplacelocalhistory.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/sharing-memories-week-thirty-two-canadas-centennial-2/.
     
  8. Mary Cook, “The Lime Kiln…99 Years of History,” Carleton Place Canadian, 1987, found in Heritage Carleton Place, accessed February 18, 2022, url: https://heritagecarletonplace.com/3/miscellaneous3.htm.
     
  9. “To Carleton Place and Up the Mississippi To Lake Park,” Ottawa Citizen, 1893, found in Linda Seccaspina, “Visiting Carleton Place 1893 - The Limestone City,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, accessed March 20, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2022/03/28/visiting-carleton-place-1893-the-limestone-city/.
     
  10. F. Hollingsworth, “A Review of Prosperous Towns in the Counties of Lanark and Grenville,” Industrial Edition of Prosperous Towns in Lanark and Grenville Counties, found in Microsoft Teams SSAC Media Archive, Project – Carleton Place, Mississippi Hotel [Set2], pp5Reports, no. 1993581-10, accessed February 10, 2022; “Fire Wrecks Hotel at Carleton Place,” Carleton Place Herald, April 13, 1959, found in Linda Seccaspina, “Burnin’ Old Memories – The Mississippi Hotel Fire,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, August 14, 2015, accessed February 16, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/burnin-old-memories-the-mississippi-hotel-fire/; Clipping from the Ottawa Journal, May 11, 1899, found in Linda Seccaspina, “Romancing the Mississippi Hotel,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, April 24, 2017, accessed February 16, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/romancing-the-mississippi-hotel/.
     
  11. Linda Seccaspina, “David McIntosh - Front Desk Man at the Mississippi Hotel,” Lindaseccaspina Remembers the Invention of the Wheel (blog), WordPress, April 27, 2017, accessed March 20, 2022, url: https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/david-mcintosh-front-desk-man-at-the-mississippi-hotel/.

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