Just for the record, if you haven’t seen the private Facebook post or public Tweet…

Local historian Dave Allston has dug up a 1934 story about some kids who idealised John Dillinger way too much, leading to a robbery and a dramatic chase across town with the young robbers shooting at the police from a stolen car, that ended up in our neighbourhood (at Pontiac and Cowley) with the thieves escaping into the forest. You can read about it on his web site at:

https://kitchissippimuseum.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-1934-hintonburg-island-park-drive.html

Neighbour Debra e-mailed Dave and wondered if Pontiac Street connected directly to Island Park Drive (there are remnants of the road with manholes in the woods, and the related old sewer line caused backflow in the 2019 flood and has since been plugged up). Dave replied back, with this 1926 map:

There’s also a 1950’s map in our Roads in the Woods – Pontiac and Other Street Expansion Plans post.

It’s interesting to see how First Street became Premier Avenue, and now it’s Amanda (name of a neighbour’s child) to avoid duplicate names across the amalgamated Ottawa.

Later on Dave commented that it became Carlou Avenue briefly, from 1947 to the early 1950s. Here’s the fire insurance map he mentioned: