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In celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday, the Citizen is rolling out one fact each day for 150 days until July 1, highlighting the odd, the fascinating and the important bits of Ottawa history you might not know about.

Did you know that downtown Rideau Street was once enclosed in a giant, hideous piece of glass? The $4.2-million Rideau bus mall was one of the worst design boondoggles in the history of the city. It opened in 1983, not long after the jazzy new Rideau Centre. The enclosure extended from the front of buildings on Rideau to cover the sidewalk. Carefree shoppers were supposed to stroll there in winter. Instead, the shelter became a “grimy meeting place for teens and transients,” a place pedestrians feared to tread, especially at night. The merchants who had originally promised to pay for the mall demanded it be torn down and the street re-opened to traffic. They got their wish a decade later, when the mall was removed and carted off to the town of Perth, where it was rechristened The Crystal Palace. It’s now used for a farmers market and other events.

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— Jacquie Miller