The rise of the car in the mid-20th century permanently altered the face of most North American cities. The Canadian capital of Ottawa was no exception, as its grand downtown railway station was decommissioned in 1966 in favour of a new station located south of downtown. The rail tracks that once lined the east side of the Rideau Canal were torn up, eventually to be replaced by a scenic road, Colonel By Drive. This week's Throwback Thursday takes us back in time to 1958, when trains were still travelling to and from Ottawa's Union Station.

Train leaving Ottawa's Union Station, 1958, image via trainweb.org

Fast forward to 2015 and the landscape has changed significantly. The former Union Station, which has served for decades as a Government Conference Centre, is being converted into the Temporary Senate of Canada building, marked in the image below by a Christmas light-adorned tower crane. Colonel By Drive now stands in place of the former rail tracks, while large-scale urban redevelopment projects have replaced much of the industrial lands that used to lie east of the station. The most notable addition to the cityscape is the Shaw Centre, a 192,000-square-foot convention centre that opened in 2011.

View of Ottawa's former Union Station, December 2015, image by Jack Landau

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