#8 Semi-permanent Building, Carling Avenue

During WWII, several clusters of 2 and 3-storey wooden "temporary" office buildings were constructed to house an explosive increase in government workers. Of #8, shown in the 1963-08-27 article below, James Powell writes —

" ... Collections of temporary buildings began popping up in other parts of the city like toadstools after a summer rain shower. Green Island, today the location of the John G. Diefenbaker Building, formerly the Ottawa City Hall, boasted two wooden temporary buildings (one of which was labeled No.7) to house statistical clerks of the War Services Department and the Wartime Prices and Trade Board. No. 5 and No. 8 Temporary Buildings were constructed in 1942 on fields close to the Experimental Farm at Carling Avenue and Preston Street. These were massive buildings housing, among other things, the Records Branch of the Department of National Defence, the Unemployment Commission, the Annuities Branch of the Department of Labour, and several branches of the Department of Finance. As these temporary buildings were well outside of the city centre, they had massive cafeterias to cater to the thousands of civil servants employed there."

The geoOttawa aerial dates from the spring of 1965 and shows buildings #s 5 and 8 to the NW of Dow's Lake, with the then-CP tracks (now LRT) running between them. To the lower left, the Sir John Carling Building nears completion.

Buildings 5 and 8 were demolished circa 1980. The land then bided its time for four decades as roughly 18 acres of lawn and parking lot until being chosen as the site of the new Ottawa Hospital facility in the early 2020s, presently under construction.