Live in Barrhaven

Mel Barr bought a 200-acre farm southwest of Ottawa in the 1960s intending to build a horse racing track on it. The Rideau Carleton Raceway went in further east instead, so he built houses, and the community took his name. Barrhaven Public School opened in 1968–69 as the first school here. What turned a subdivision into a city-sized suburb was a planning decision: in 1977 the Regional Municipality approved a large expansion at Barrhaven in place of growth intended for Carlsbad Springs, where the Leda clay was a problem. The Ontario Municipal Board tried to limit it in 1978 and the provincial cabinet overruled that in 1979. Everything since follows from those two years.

It is older than it looks. Jockvale Road follows a path that was a First Nations trail through the bush, and the Jockvale School House at Jockvale and Strandherd was built in 1841 and still stands. The Canadian Northern Railway put a line through in 1911 with fast passenger service from a Fallowfield station; the tracks still bisect the community diagonally, and VIA reintroduced service at a new Fallowfield station in 2002.

What is here now. 103,234 people on the census definition, in a long list of developer-named neighbourhoods — Old Barrhaven, Longfields, Davidson Heights, Chapman Mills, Stonebridge, Half Moon Bay, Quinn's Pointe — on curving streets that never form a grid. Two City recreation complexes, the Walter Baker Sports Centre with the library inside it and the newer Minto complex on Greenbank. Chapman Mills Marketplace for the shopping and the cinema. Two very large public high schools and one Catholic one. Almost all the parks and schools built since 2000.

The honest version, and it is the commute. Barrhaven has no O-Train. The Woodroffe Transitway carries the busiest bus corridor in the city, VIA's Fallowfield station goes to Toronto rather than downtown, and the nearest rail station — Limebank, the Line 2 southern terminus — is across the Rideau River in Riverside South. Twenty-three kilometres to Parliament Hill, all of it on roads. The second honest note is the ground: this is open farmland on three sides, which means Fallowfield, Strandherd and Greenbank drift shut before the highways do, and the Jock River runs through the southern edge. Neither is a reason not to live here — a hundred thousand people have decided otherwise — but both belong in the decision.

Worth knowing before you commit

The fastest-growing part of Ottawa, and no train

The Woodroffe buses do the work, and Limebank is across the river

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• No O-Train in Barrhaven; the nearest station is Limebank, over the Vimy bridge in Riverside South
• The Woodroffe Transitway is the busiest bus corridor in the city, and it is the commute
• Fallowfield station is VIA, not OC Transpo — it goes to Toronto and Montréal, not downtown
• Open farmland on three sides means real drifting: the arterials close before the highways do
• Almost everything here is post-2000 construction, with the parks and schools built alongside
• The Jock River runs through the southern edge — check the floodplain on anything near it

How Barrhaven got here

• Pre-contactThe area was long inhabited by First Nations peoples, and modern Jockvale Road follows an ancient path that was originally a trail through the wilderness.
• 1841The Jockvale School House is built at what is now Jockvale and Strandherd. It still stands, as a historic site in the middle of a suburb that did not exist for another century and a quarter.
• 1911The Canadian Northern Railway builds a line from Ottawa to Toronto through the area, with fast passenger service from a Fallowfield Station near Strandherd and Cedarview. The tracks still bisect the community diagonally.
• 1960sMel Barr buys a 200-acre farm intending to build a horse racing track. The Rideau Carleton Raceway is built further east instead, so he develops the land for housing — and the community takes his name.
• 1968–69Barrhaven Public School opens as the community's first school.
• 1977–1979The Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton approves expansion in Barrhaven, replacing growth previously intended for Carlsbad Springs because of Leda clay in the soil there. The Ontario Municipal Board limits the expansion in 1978; the provincial cabinet overrules that decision in 1979, and Barrhaven's growth follows from it.
• 2001Amalgamation. The City of Nepean disappears into the new City of Ottawa, and Barrhaven becomes a ward within it.
• 2002VIA Rail reintroduces passenger service to the area at a new Fallowfield station, at Fallowfield Road and Woodroffe Avenue — the only passenger rail Barrhaven has, and it goes to Toronto rather than downtown.
• 2000s–2020sChapman Mills, Stonebridge, Longfields, Davidson Heights, Half Moon Bay and Quinn's Pointe fill in, most of the parks and schools built since 2000, and the population reaches 103,234 by the 2021 census. The Vimy Memorial Bridge opens over the Rideau in 2014, connecting to Riverside South. Rail transit remains a plan.

The resident's angle: for a community with this many children the sports-field provision is genuinely good, and it is the thing families move here for after the houses. The gap is water: there is no supervised swimming in Barrhaven and the nearest beach is Mooney's Bay, twenty minutes away. The two City pools do a great deal of work as a result.

The free option is Clarke Fields Park and the neighbourhood park network, and — for anything that is not a pitch — the Rideau River pathway on the eastern edge and Stony Swamp in the Greenbelt to the north.