This should replace a very recent previous posting/
I was able to access Imgur, finally, and can post the one picture I took at the Union Station on the occasion of my one visit to Ottawa to check out the sound system in the then-new performing arts center.
Where the above tracks are next to the canal is now a park. A shame they closed down the original Union Station- the trains now stop on a wind-swept hilltop not very close to downtown.
The ‘new’ 1966 Ottawa Station won numerous Architectural Awards for its massive open trussed roof “reminiscent of an old train shed” along with precast elements….and was now much more convenient to reach for a lot of residents with its own freeway interchange and large parking areas.
The new station eventually had its own ‘station’ along the bus ‘Transitway’…which reopens next year as a full Light Rail System crossing the city including a downtown subway.
The federal government was decentralizing in the ‘60s and not everyone worked downtown anymore with new office complexes being built at Tunney’s Pasture, Confederation Heights etc.
The old dowager of a Union Station downtown became a Federal Conference Centre and once again is being repurposed as the Senate Chamber while that in the Centre Block on Parliament Hill is being renovated over the next few years.
Not to argue with you, I go to Ottawa several times a year on business, by car as I have to stop in various towns along the way and the station sure looks “out of it” to me, much like the Amtrak station in Detroit. Withe migration of people back to the inner cities, I think that keepng the original station in use would have been a good thing.