Poets’ Pathway in New Edinburgh
Poets at the unveiling of the Lett plaque, including George Elliott Clarke (left, Canada's poet laureate at the time), and Andrée Lacelle and Jamaal Jackson Rogers (who were City of Ottawa poets laureate), 2017.
This tour celebrates the literary history of New Edinburgh. New Edinburgh was a literary hotspot of 19th Century Ottawa, with poets’ homes and literary salons. We will walk past some homes of literary figures of the 19th century, see where Confederation Poet William Wilfred Campbell lived for a while, tell the story of Bessie Blair and her Sir Galahad, and read some of Campbell’s poems written for people who lived right here between 1901-1910. The tour will culminate with a visit to the Poets’ Pathway plaques (installed in 2012), where we say hello to poets Archibald Lampman and Alfred Garneau, and read some poems.
We would love to hear other stories of the neighbourhood, and to hear any history or poems anyone else would like to read.
The Poets’ Pathway is a 34-km walking trail around Ottawa established to commemorate the Confederation Poets, Canada’s and Ottawa’s famous poets of the 19th Century, who lived in this area and wrote about Ottawa’s local landscape. We have installed 14 bronze poetry plaques along the trail, which runs from Britannia to Beechwood Cemetery. Each plaque bears a poem appropriate to the landscape where it is situated.
It is part of our mandate to help maintain the trail areas as greenspace. For more information on the Poet's Pathway, visit our website at www.poetspathway.ca.
