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Ottawa’s first public drinking house has an origin story as romantic as any.

It was also the cause of Ottawa’s — or Bytown’s — first lawsuit, a legal spectacle in which avarice, not alcohol, set some of our first settlers against one another.

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Mother Firth’s Tavern, as it was known, was owned by squatters and catered to immigrants, travellers, lumbermen, soldiers and canal officials and workers.

Its story begins with Mary Dalmahoy, whom one historian described as “the first glamour girl of Bytown.”

Dalmahoy was a milliner, or hat-maker, who, intrigued by stories she’d heard from her step-father who had fought here, came to Canada from her home in Edinburgh, Scotland, likely in 1818.

During her stay in London, she met Isaac Firth, a clerk at a sugar warehouse who, smitten by the feisty woman, asked for her hand in marriage. She said no, and set sail, landing first in Quebec City, then Montreal and finally Bytown.