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Development of the new Civic campus of the Ottawa Hospital at the Central Experimental Farm site near Dow’s lake raises a question: How much do we want to remember and celebrate the scientific heritage of the old Dominion Observatory next door?

This heritage building with the dome, close to Carling Avenue, has an impressive history. It played a critical role more than 100 years ago in helping to map Canada, including measuring the famous 49th parallel and setting the borders of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. This important role in establishing highly precise coordinates for maps and setting boundaries also assisted in discovering continental drift. Along with other observatories across North America and Europe, measurements taken here showed that the two continents were moving relative to one another, providing the empirical basis for the geology of plate tectonics.

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Photo by Pat McGrath / Ottawa Citizen

Following Canadian Sir Sanford Fleming’s leadership in the 1880s in persuading countries to adopt 24 “standard time” zones circling the globe, one of the Dominion Observatory’s first roles after 1902, when it was built, was the precise measurement of time, in coordination with the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in England, the Royal Observatory in Capetown, South Africa, and others. Until responsibility for time measurement was moved to the National Research Council after the invention of the Atomic Clock, CBC Radio’s time signal (“it will be exactly one o’clock after the long dash”) came from this observatory.