EASTERN ONTARIO: Owner flattens house before City of Ottawa can protect it as heritage

By Farmers Forum staff
OTTAWA — A Kanata homeowner, west of urban Ottawa, tore down his 19th-century farmhouse just days before the city could being the process to formally stamp it with a heritage designation. The front porch addition looked like a drive-by liquor store but it was the stone structure behind it that caught the city’s attention.

The city’s heritage committee planned to bring a heritage designation vote to council on Oct. 23. That would’ve cancelled any work, or demolition, the owner was planning to do. The heritage designation also comes with restrictions for owners, including a requirement to replace any building destroyed with one of similar size, shape, in the same location, and also stipulates maintenance requirements for homeowners.

But the unidentified owner got a demolition permit on Oct. 17 and flattened the house three days later. He is now in negotiation to sell the 10-acre property to a developer, CBC news reported.

The chair of the committee, city Coun. Glen Gower, called the demolition an “absolute shame,” though the buyer’s lawyer blamed the city, saying that it had years to put a heritage designation on the property and never did.

About 900 properties in the city’s limits have a heritage designation. Over 10,000 are considered to be of “heritage interest” to the city.