Sparks Street (French: Rue Sparks) is a street in Downtown Ottawa, Canada that was converted into an outdoor pedestrian street in 1966, making it the earliest such street or mall in Canada.
Sparks runs from Elgin Street in the east to Bronson Avenue. The Sparks Street Mall, that contains a number of outdoor restaurants and also a number of works of art and fountains, only runs from Elgin to Bank Street. The pedestrian only portion continues for another two blocks westward, with the final two blocks west of Lyon Street being a regular road.
The mall and most of the buildings on the south side are owned and operated by the National Capital Commission. Buildings on the north side of the mall were expropriated by the Government of Canada in 1973 and are currently operated by Public Works and Government Services Canada.
Read more about Sparks Street: History, Events, Landmarks, Map
Famous quotes containing the words sparks and/or street:
“Though mine enemy thou hast ever been,
High sparks of honor in thee have I seen.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner’s jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)