Once Ottawa’s largest mall, Carlingwood Shopping Centre turns 70

One of Ottawa’s oldest malls is celebrating a major milestone: its 70th anniversary. CTV’s Peter Szperling reports.

One of Ottawa’s oldest shopping malls — and at one point, the city’s largest — is celebrating its 70^th anniversary.

On Friday, Carlingwood marked the milestone by inviting shoppers, community members and dignitaries to take part in a ceremony and activities.

The shopping mall opened in 1956.

“Carling was two lanes, and there was no Queensway,” Jackie Holzman, former Ottawa mayor and councillor, told CTV News Ottawa at the celebrtion. “You didn’t go downtown, you came to Carlingwood.”

“It’s been here for 70 years, and a lot of the community has been here for 70 years too; so, this is not just a celebration of the mall, but the community as well,” says Rob Caldwell, Carlingwood’s general manager of property management.

“When it opened in the 50s, this was like the big shopping area, like, before you’d have to go to individual stores all across the city, or you’d have to go downtown to the market. This was a big service to the west end of the city.”

According to local historian Dave Allston, Carlingwood was the largest mall in Ottawa when it opened.

“When Carlingwood first opened, Ottawa was in this sort of an arms race for malls. So, we just had Westgate opening. We just had Billings Bridge open up.”

Allston says the Westgate Shopping Centre had just opened months earlier and Carlingwood expected to draw large crowds.

“So, they built 3000 parking,” Allston says. “And on the very first day, they had 10,000 people show up because it was a big, exciting thing.”

According to Allston, the area was formerly the Honeywell Farm, “a well-known name in this area because it was the first settler of Nepean township.”

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe says he grew up near the mall.

“My family came to this mall, once or twice a week. I used to walk here when I was a kid. My first bank account was here,” Sutcliffe said.

The first store to open was Simpsons-Sears, which welcomed shoppers a year before the rest of the mall opened, according to Allston.

Some of the former stores include Simpsons-Sears (eventually Sears), Marks & Spencer and Zellers. Recently, a Canadian Tire moved in, which Carlingwood says is the largest in Canada.

Celebrations on Friday included speeches and a cake cutting.

Events continue on Saturday with a roller rink, photobooth station, face painting and balloon artist as well as vintage car displays.

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