Located just one block south of Parliament Hill, Sparks Street is the site of  Thomas D'Arcy McGee's assassination.  One will regularly see reporters and cameras on the Mall conducting their national political reports.  Ottawa tour buses are also stationed on Sparks Street.  In the summer you can meet local artisans who are part of the Mall's Outdoor Market program.

NICHOLAS SPARKS

The history of Sparks Street dates back to the pre-Confederation days of Colonel John By when Ottawa was called Bytown.  The young Irish Nicholas Sparks had come up river to work for the founding Wright Family of Hull.

In 1826 Nicholas married Sarah Wright - the widow of Philemon Wright Jr. and with her nine children, moved to the south side of the Ottawa river to purchase 200 acres of land with a log cabin for 95 pounds (approximately $235.00 Canadian).

In approximately 1848 he cut Sparks Street through his property from Bank Street to Biddy's Lane - known today as Elgin Street.  His property actually stretched across to where the Westin Hotel stands today and part of it was expropriated for the Rideau Canal - Sparks donated land for a church, fire station, and other public building sites such as City Hall - which today is the site of the National Arts Centre.

Nicholas Sparks  served on the first town council for Bytown in 1847 and for the City of Ottawa Council in 1854.  He died in 1862 and is buried in St. James Cemetery in Hull, across the Ottawa River in Quebec.  Descendants of the Sparks family are still in the Ottawa area and were recently contacted by the Sparks Street Mall Management Board regarding the history of their family.

There are over 30 building of heritage and historical significance to the City of Ottawa.  These buildings have been documented in a heritage study conducted by the City of Ottawa and Sparks Street has been designated as a Heritage District.   Sparks Street is home to longtime retail stores and businesses that have been owned by generations of Ottawa families.  Some of Canada's largest banks are still located in prestigious locations and buildings on the Mall.

The Life and times of
Thomas D'Arcy McGee, (1825-1868)
Father of Confederation, as narrated by himself.

If you will gather closely before me, I will fill your ears with tragedy.   The tragedy is my own death, which happened on this very spot.  We will come soon enough to the details, but before death, there must be a life.

The years that formed me were spent in dear, troubled Ireland, and my family shared in those troubles.  My father was in the services of the Coast Guard, and my mother, may she rest for ever in peace, died when I was eight.  I waited another ten years; and then took passage to the Americas, as did 93,000 Irish men, women and children that year.  I ended up in Boston, looking for work.

I was only seventeen, but I knew what I wanted to be:  a patriotic poet, and that is what I became funny amongst many other things including journalist, editor of several of my own newspapers, rebel, respected author - read my "A popular History of Ireland" for proof of that claim - politician, the finest orator of my time - go ask Sir John A. Macdonald up on the hill if you are troubled by my own estimate.   That, and a seeker of a cure, (other than death), for varicose veins, which gave me more vexation in life that the British Tories ever did.

Tories are stubborn , I believe that no man's mind is a fixed thing; it is not a status unable to take up a new position.  Several times in my life, as I matured and saw the true colour of life, not just the black and white, I let my opinions take a new course:  I distanced myself from the Catholic church, and rejoined it.

In my mad youth I defended the Fenians in their quest for a free Ireland, but later renounced their rebellious plans and foolish invasion of Canada.  Though dreary I never ceased to dream of an unfettered Ireland.  I know I made enemies doing so, as we shall see.  At one time, if you are able to credit this, I believed that Canada should annex itself to the American republic!

OH CANADA!  But once I had visited this noble land, the result of God's greats care, and then settled in the bustling metropolis of Montreal, I knew that a united Canada, united, as the Bible says, from sea to sea, from the Maritime colonies to the western Hudson's Bay lands, was my true dream, and I devoted my life to it.  On July 1st, 1867, which you now celebrate as Canada Day, that dream of unity came true.

And now we come to the night of my unjust death.  Turn, if you please, to look to the east, to the corner of this street and Metcalfe.  It is close to two o'clock in the morning, on a frosty April 7th, 1868.  We see light snow on the ground and two men standing on the corner.  One is myself, smoking a cigar and heading home to my rooms after a long night's speechifying in Parliament.  The other is a fellow member.  We part, my last words are "God bless you," and I walk towards us, hand in my coat pocket, searching for my door key.

And look, another man comes behind me.  He is the tailor Patrick James Whelan, an old nemesis who had stood not an hour earlier in the public gallery of the chamber and bared his teeth at my pronouncements, his mind twisted by the subversive mob of the St. Patrick's Society.

Scene of McGee's assassination. Soure Code

In my hand now, A key, but in his, a gun!  Muffled by the snow he is behind me without noise.  The gun is put against my head, and fired.  The bullet rushes through this well-exercised brain, passes out the ever-active mouth and buries itself in the door I will never again enter.  I die in mid-thought.  The act that will fix me in history was witnessed  only by a returning page

The next day before a shocked Parliament Sir John A. Macdonald had these sober words to say about me.  "He has lived a short life, respected and beloved, and died a heroic death; a martyr to the cause of his country."  I am pleased to note that my martyrdom has borne fruit and that this country is still one.

Should you wish to stand before my grave, you will have to travel to Montreal, where my body was interred on Easter Monday, the day that would have been my forty-third birthday.  Patrick James Whelan was hanged on a cold February 11th 1869 at an Ottawa jail, his life taken for the taking of mine.  I am remembered now in history books and in the name of lively hostelry on the corner of this street.  And, as I had hoped, I am remembered as a poet.  Let us let the poet have the last words.

Wanted poster for the   assassin of the Hon. Thomas D'Arcy McGee Soure Code

Rob me of all the joys of sense Curse me with all but impotence  Fling me upon an ocean or  Cast me upon a savage shore  Kill me!  But own above my bier  The man now gone still held while here the jewel, Independence.