What heritage designation would mean for Kanata’s Beaverbrook community

When Neil Thomson first drove through Beaverbrook in the early 1990s, he says he didn’t expect to stop. He and his wife were house-hunting with a young child and another on the way, and they had just moved from Toronto and toured homes in Blackburn Hamlet and Manotick.

But after seeing what the rock outcroppings and natural setting of Kanata’s Beaverbrook neighbourhood provided, Thomson knew he didn’t want to live anywhere else.

“When we got here and drove through, and we saw the Beaverbrook community, I just said, ‘Stop. This is where we want to live,” Thomson recalled in an interview with the Ottawa Lookout. “I thought it looked like North Vancouver… deep lots, nice houses, big canopy of trees, parks everywhere, and schools embedded in the community.”

More than three decades later, the same design choices that drew him in are now at the centre of a city-led process that could see Beaverbrook formally recognized as a Heritage Conservation District (HCD).

Ottawa city council has approved a comprehensive study to determine whether Beaverbrook — a planned, nature-oriented community first built in the mid-1960s — meets the criteria for heritage district designation.

The move follows earlier work by heritage staff, including a feasibility assessment and community engagement. It follows the city’s heritage committee directing staff to undertake an HCD study and prepare a plan for the area.

Supporters argue that Beaverbrook is unlike many later suburban neighbourhoods because it was designed as a complete, satellite community — with housing types, pathways, parkettes, schools and a central service hub intentionally planned together — and built to blend with the rugged Canadian Shield landscape rather than flattening it into uniform subdivisions. It’s what many modern city planners would refer to as a 15-minute community.

Kanata North Coun. Cathy Curry said the push for heritage recognition has been years in the making and, in her view, is rooted in what residents have long seen as a rare planning experiment that is still unique today.

“The people of Beaverbrook back in 2014 really felt that their area, their neighbourhood and the design, the look and feel, the… community nature of it all, the blending in of nature with all the architecture, should be something known by someone,” Curry said. “And I think heritage is the most appropriate designation.”

Curry said the effort stalled when the province overhauled its heritage framework, but has since resumed under updated provincial guidelines.

If approved, Beaverbrook would be one of the city’s most notable heritage designations; unlike other neighbourhoods that feature an early-settlement streetscape of stone buildings or Victorian homes, Beaverbrook’s significance lies in mid-century suburban planning.

A City of Ottawa engagement page for the feasibility work similarly framed the process as identifying what the community values and what strategy best conserves Beaverbrook’s heritage character.

There are 21 neighbourhoods in Ottawa designated as heritage conservation districts, including The ByWard Market, Rockcliffe Park, Sandy Hill, and portions of Bank Street. 

Long before Kanata became synonymous with Canada’s biggest tech park and rapid suburban growth, developer Bill Teron set out to build something he felt Ottawa’s postwar suburbs were missing: a complete community that worked for families day-to-day.

To achieve that, Teron undertook his own personal study of the “deficits of post-war Canadian bedroom suburbs,” followed by a 1960 world tour that included the World Design Conference in Tokyo and visits to new communities in Europe and the U.S.

Drawing from Ebenezer Howard’s “Garden City” model, the goal was not just to build houses, but to plan a neighbourhood where nature, schools, services and employment were part of a single design.

Teron described his approach with a line that has become shorthand for Beaverbrook’s founding philosophy: “the widest range of diversity possible within the mobility of a tricycle”.

In practice, that meant mixing housing forms and price points — from single-family homes to townhouses, co-ops and apartments — so residents could stay in the community through different life stages, and neighbours of different incomes could live near one another. He wanted to ensure that a minimum-wage-earning employee could live in the same area as a CEO.

It also meant designing streets and pathways around how kids actually move: schools were embedded within neighbourhood clusters, while parks and paths connected homes to classrooms, playgrounds and gathering places without forcing children onto busy roads.

Planning documents tied to Beaverbrook’s original concepts emphasize that green space and wooded buffers helped define clusters of homes, create quieter residential pockets, and separate uses, such as traffic corridors, from living areas.

“Nature was to be more dominant than houses,” Teron wrote in his Heritage Ottawa lecture notes.

The community’s look — from earth-toned materials to the way buildings sit among mature trees and Canadian Shield rock — was meant to feel like it belonged to the landscape rather than be imposed on it.

Construction began in the 1960s and was designed for about 1,500 families — or 4,000 people.

Despite relatively broad support for heritage designation, Thomson, who is also president of the Beaverbrook Community Association, said the label can trigger concern among some homeowners who fear it would severely limit what they can do with their own property.

He says that is a misconception.

“There are a lot of people who misunderstand heritage district to mean heritage building designation,” Thomson said.

Those are two different things. 

In his view, the real intent is not to freeze homes in time, but to guide significant changes such as demolitions, large additions, or replacement builds so new work respects the neighbourhood’s established character. 

He said recent examples show that this kind of approach can work when developers engage with residents early and adapt designs to fit the setting. For example, a few years ago, plans were brought forward to build a high-rise on the edge of Beaverbrook. 

Thompson said they resembled towers you would see in Manhattan with chrome, black and yellow metal. 

“The building looked like it dropped from outer space,”  he said. 

But after the developer worked with the community, they created a design that better fit the current surroundings. 

“It’s now been built. You wouldn't even notice it. It blends in. It’s a modern version of what Bill Theron would have constructed,” said Thompson.

The timeline for possible heritage designation is still taking shape, but Curry said city staff have suggested the study work could take roughly a year before returning with recommendations on what features should be protected and how the rules would function.

City communications about the Beaverbrook HCD work indicate the study and plan will be developed in accordance with Ontario’s heritage framework and will involve additional analysis and consultation.

Curry believes if approved, it could raise property values in the area and could preserve features such as hedges for fences and its light-up street signs. 

“Bill Teron designed a community where the power lines were not these harsh things up above your head where you'd have tennis shoes hanging off the lines. Instead, there would be little globe lights in front of every house. That was the street lighting. And all that electricity was buried underneath,” she said. 

For Thomson, the goal is to ensure that Beaverbrook remains a unique neighbourhood, unlike many cookie-cutter suburbs built today. Having seen areas like Stittsville develop over recent decades, the tech executive says they lack the features of Teron's vision for communities. 

“They are bedroom communities out in the middle of a field. Turnover is something like every 24 months because there’s no community spirit,” he said.

“The one thing that I’ve realized is that a 15-minute community is not about getting to the liquor store. It’s about kids,” Thompson added. “Are they a five or 10-minute walk from a park or to a school? That’s how you build a community.”