Live in Bayshore
A hundred acres of privately owned rental housing built in 1963, a regional mall across the road, and an O-Train station replacing the busway at the end of it.
Bayshore is not really a neighbourhood in the sense the word usually carries in this city. It is one estate with one landlord. The Minto Group built it in 1963 and through the 1960s and 1970s, Ferguslea Properties bought it in the early 2000s, and in 2011 Ferguslea rebranded the whole thing Accora Village and put $40 million into it. Ferguslea describes it as Canada's largest privately owned rental community: about a hundred acres between Carling Avenue, Bayshore Drive, Highway 417 and Holly Acres Road, ten high-rise buildings, 986 townhomes and garden homes, and more than nine thousand residents. Across Carling and north to the Ottawa River is Belltown, which is the opposite: detached houses begun in the early 1920s with additions in the late 1940s, sitting between Britannia Park and Andrew Haydon Park. The Ottawa Neighbourhood Study puts the two together in one unit of 9,313 people, which means the published figure for this place averages a 1920s riverside pocket with a 1963 rental estate. What decides the question here is what the landlord does next, and whether the rail station arriving at the mall changes the arithmetic.
One estate, one landlord, and a rail station arriving at the mall
Bayshore occupies about 0.71 km² in Bay Ward, bordered by Carling Avenue to the north, Bayshore Drive to the east, Highway 417 to the south and Holly Acres Road to the west, with Woodridge Crescent running through the middle of it. Belltown lies immediately north across Carling, bounded by Britannia Park to the east, the Ottawa River to the north and Andrew Haydon Park to the west. This guide covers the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study's Bayshore – Belltown (901) neighbourhood, which is the two of them together. That ONS unit is the only published tier that names Bayshore at all, and it is wider than the estate the name usually means.
Bayshore is not a neighbourhood in the way the word is usually used here. It is an estate. The Minto Group built the first of it in 1963 and filled in the hundred acres between Carling Avenue, Bayshore Drive, Highway 417 and Holly Acres Road over the following fifteen years, almost all of it rental. Ferguslea Properties bought it from Minto in the early 2000s and by 2011 was managing roughly 2,465 units; that year it put $40 million into the place and renamed it Accora Village. Ferguslea calls the result Canada's largest privately owned rental community: ten high-rise buildings, 986 townhomes and garden homes, and over nine thousand residents.
The other half of the ONS unit is nothing like it. North across Carling, on the Ottawa River between Britannia Park and Andrew Haydon Park, sits Belltown: detached houses begun in the early 1920s with more added in the late 1940s, owner-occupied and quiet. The Ottawa Neighbourhood Study counts the two together as Bayshore – Belltown, 9,313 people, and that is the only published figure this place has. It averages a 1920s riverside pocket with a 1963 rental estate, and it will not tell you which of them you are looking at.
What you actually get here. Bayshore Shopping Centre is across Bayshore Drive: 883,250 square feet and 192 stores since the third floor went on in 1987, and the west end's only full-size mall since Walmart left Lincoln Fields for it in 2016. The Bayshore Community Centre on Woodridge Crescent is a City pool and gymnasium that most households here can walk to, which is rare in the west end. Andrew Haydon Park and the riverside pathway are a kilometre north. And NDHQ Carling, the former Nortel campus holding around 9,350 National Defence staff, is eight kilometres west, which makes this one of the few Ottawa addresses where the big federal employer is not downtown.
The question a tenant should ask. Ferguslea has published a plan to add low, medium and high-rise buildings on the estate through to 2050, and says it is revitalising more than 2,400 of the existing units. What it has not published is a schedule saying which buildings, in which order, and what happens to the people in them. Tenants have been asking; the answer is not in the public record. The single landlord is the whole risk profile here, in a way it simply is not on a street of separately owned houses, and it is worth pricing before signing anything.
The honest version. Bayshore has been treated as the west end's cheap corner for sixty years, and the reputational discount is real and, in places, unfair. The rail station at the mall is expected in 2027 and will put this address one transfer from downtown. Ontario freezes assessments at 2016 values, so Ottawa's published tax rates run against a decade-old valuation rather than a market price, and the multi-residential class carries its own higher rate, which shows up in the rent.
- Almost every unit here is rented from Ferguslea. Read what the landlord has published before you sign
- The redevelopment plan runs to 2050 with no published building-by-building schedule
- Bayshore station is being rebuilt for Line 3, expected 2027, with the transfer to Line 1 at Lincoln Fields
- The 9,313 figure is Bayshore and Belltown together, and the two are forty years and one tenure apart
- The City pool and gymnasium are inside the estate, which is unusual for the west end
- Ottawa Community Housing's large west-end site is at Ramsey Crescent in Britannia, not here
How Bayshore got here
- 1920s–1940sBelltown is built on the Ottawa River shore north of Carling, between what are now Britannia Park and Andrew Haydon Park. It starts in the early 1920s and takes further building in the late 1940s, and it is detached, owner-occupied and small.
- 1963The Minto Group builds the first of Bayshore south of Carling: townhouses, garden homes and high-rise apartment buildings, on farmland at the western edge of the built-up city.
- 1960s–1970sThe estate fills in across roughly a hundred acres between Carling, Bayshore Drive, Highway 417 and Holly Acres Road, almost all of it rental. Woodridge Crescent becomes the spine of the place, and remains so.
- 1973Bayshore Shopping Centre opens on 8 August across Bayshore Drive, on two floors with Steinberg's, Miracle Mart, The Bay and Eaton's. A third floor is completed in September 1987, adding 65 stores.
- Early 2000sFerguslea Properties acquires the estate from Minto. By 2011 it is managing roughly 2,465 units, and it is the single largest private landlord any Ottawa neighbourhood has.
- 2011Ferguslea announces a $40 million investment and rebrands the estate Accora Village. It describes the result as Canada's largest privately owned rental community: ten high-rise buildings, 986 townhomes and garden homes, and over nine thousand residents on about a hundred acres.
- 2016Walmart leaves Lincoln Fields for Bayshore and opens a Supercentre in the space Target Canada had taken and never filled. Lincoln Fields Shopping Centre closes three years later, and Bayshore becomes the west end's only full-size mall.
- 2020sThe Transitway station at Bayshore is being replaced by a Line 3 rail station, expected in 2027, and Ferguslea has set out a plan to add low, medium and high-rise buildings on the estate through to 2050. Tenants have been raising the obvious question about what happens to the existing units, and no published schedule answers it.
A kilometre of riverfront park, and a pathway that runs to downtown without stopping
Andrew Haydon Park is a kilometre north up Holly Acres, and it is the largest riverside park in the west end: ponds, lawns, a bandshell and a summer Sunday concert series. East along the shore are Britannia Beach and the Britannia Conservation Area that everyone calls Mud Lake, the best urban birding in Ottawa. Southwest, into the Greenbelt, are Wesley Clover Parks and Stony Swamp. Inside the estate the open space is private and generous, which is what makes the townhouse rows read as a village rather than a block.
What the map does not show: the National Capital Commission pathway is the asset nobody quotes in a listing. It runs from Andrew Haydon east to downtown and west towards Kanata, flat, cleared in winter, with no road crossing worth the name for most of it. For a household without a car, and there are many here, that pathway plus the Transitway is the whole mobility picture, and it is better than the postcode suggests.
Elsewhere in Ottawa, not Bayshore
22 places, with real drive times
Road-adjusted distance and drive time from the centre of the community to each destination, nearest first. Filter by category.
Showing 1–12 of 22 places, nearest first.
Method: distances and drive times are computed from a representative point near Woodridge Crescent, using straight-line distance multiplied by a road factor and a tiered speed model. Honest ranges, not routed times. Bayshore and Lincoln Fields stations are counted here as the transit sites they are today, since the rail service through them is not open.
Every gym within reach
The Bayshore Community Centre on Woodridge Crescent is the important one: a City gymnasium and pool inside the estate, at municipal prices, close enough to walk to from most of it. That is a genuinely unusual thing to be able to say in the west end. Beyond it, Dovercourt Recreation Centre in Westboro carries the deepest programme list in this half of the city, and the Nepean Sportsplex carries the arenas, the pools and the indoor track.
- A City gymnasium and pool on Woodridge Crescent, walkable from most of the estate
- Dovercourt is a non-profit rather than a City facility and prices its membership separately
- Commercial gyms sit in the Bayshore plazas rather than on the residential crescents
| Facility | What it is | Drive |
|---|---|---|
| Bayshore Community Centre open | The City centre on Woodridge Crescent, inside the estate: a gymnasium and a pool at municipal prices, with drop-in programmes. For most households here it is a walk, which is unusual for a City pool in the west end. | 2 min |
| Dovercourt Recreation Centre open | The non-profit centre in Westboro: pool, gymnasium, fitness floor and the largest children's programme list in the west end. Not a City facility, so it prices its membership separately. | 10–15 min |
| Nepean Sportsplex open | The City's multiplex on Woodroffe at Hunt Club: arenas, two pools, an indoor track, a gymnasium and a fitness centre. The overflow booking for anything the local centres cannot hold. | 10–15 min |
| Andrew Haydon Park open | The free option, and a good one. The riverside pathway runs east from the park all the way to downtown without a road crossing worth the name, it is flat, and it is cleared through the winter. | 3–5 min |
The free option is the riverside pathway from Andrew Haydon Park. It is flat, it is cleared through the winter, and it runs east to downtown and west towards Kanata without a road crossing worth the name.
Two elementaries inside the boundary, and a bus for everything after grade six
Bayshore Public School and St. Rose of Lima, the Catholic elementary that used to be called Bayshore Catholic, are both inside the neighbourhood and both run kindergarten to grade 6. After that the children get on a bus. Bell High School on Cassidy Road in Bells Corners has run grades 7 to 12 since it absorbed D. Aubrey Moodie in 2018, carries gifted, advanced placement and French immersion programmes, and runs routes from here.
| School | Board | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Bayshore Public School | OCDSB | The English public elementary inside the neighbourhood, kindergarten to grade 6. Almost every child on the estate starts here. |
| St. Rose of Lima School | OCSB | The Catholic elementary, kindergarten to grade 6 with English and French immersion streams. It was formerly Bayshore Catholic School. |
| Bell High School | OCDSB | The public secondary at 40 Cassidy Road in Bells Corners, grades 7 to 12 since it absorbed D. Aubrey Moodie in 2018. It carries gifted, advanced placement and French immersion programmes and runs buses from Bayshore. |
| Collège catholique Franco-Ouest | CECCE | The French-language Catholic secondary at 411 Seyton Drive in Bells Corners, grades 7 to 12, with an International Baccalaureate programme. |
| École secondaire publique Omer-Deslauriers | CEPEO | The French-language public secondary at 159 Chesterton Drive in Nepean, grades 7 to 12. It is the closest French public secondary, and it is not close. |
French-language schooling means leaving the neighbourhood in both systems: Collège catholique Franco-Ouest on Seyton Drive in Bells Corners for the French Catholic secondary, with its International Baccalaureate programme, and École secondaire publique Omer-Deslauriers on Chesterton Drive in Nepean for the French public one. Confirm the current catchment for a specific address with the board before you sign, because the boundaries out here follow the arterials rather than the estate.
Month by month, what living here looks like
Not a highlights reel: the actual annual rhythm, including the dates residents have to remember.
- Bayshore's concourse is where people walk in January, and the mall opens early for it
- The Transitway is cleared before almost anything else in the west end, which is the practical advantage of living beside it
- Wind off the river hits Belltown harder than the estate south of Carling
- The coldest stretch of the year, and the month heat and window quality decide what a unit here feels like
- Free skating at the Bayshore Community Centre's gymnasium hours and the outdoor rinks nearby
- Groomed ski trails in Stony Swamp are a quarter of an hour southwest
- The Ottawa River rises and the low ground at Andrew Haydon Park floods most years
- March break, and Bayshore is where the west end's teenagers spend it
- Grit and potholes on Carling and Holly Acres, which carry the whole estate's traffic
- Migration at Mud Lake, ten minutes east, which is worth the trip even if you have never looked at a bird
- The rail construction season restarts and the detours around the station site come back
- The pathway along the river dries out and reopens end to end
- Andrew Haydon Park's ponds and bandshell come back into use, and the Sunday concert season starts
- The estate's own green space, which is the reason the townhouse rows read as a village rather than a block
- Best cycling weeks of the year on the riverside pathway, which runs unbroken to downtown
- Sunset near 8:50pm, and the river path is busy until it goes
- School ends at Bayshore Public School and St. Rose of Lima, and the buses to Bell High School stop for the summer
- Community events on the estate, which Ferguslea runs rather than a community association
- Britannia Beach is supervised through the summer and is the closest swimming
- Humidex days in the thirties, and the older high-rise blocks are the buildings that feel them
- The Queensway is briefly tolerable, and a downtown drive matches the free-flow estimate
- The month to ask what cooling a unit actually has before signing anything
- Andrew Haydon's ponds are at their lowest and least appealing; the beach is the better call
- Back-to-school traffic returns to Carling in the last week
- Algonquin College's term starts and the buses out of Bayshore station fill
- The best cycling and walking weeks of the year on the river
- Autumn registration at the Bayshore Community Centre and at Dovercourt, both of which fill quickly
- The shoreline from Andrew Haydon to Britannia is the best walk of the year, and it is free
- First frost, usually in the first half of the month
- Lease renewal season, and the month to read what the landlord has published about the redevelopment
- Dark by half past four, and the walk across the Bayshore Drive crossing to the mall is the part people mind
- The overnight winter parking ban starts, which in an estate of surface lots is a real constraint
- Snow tires, and on Carling and the 417 ramps they are not optional
- Bayshore's car parks are full from the first weekend, and the Bayshore Drive queue backs onto Carling
- Outdoor rinks go in on the estate and in Belltown once the cold holds
- The first serious storm, and the reminder that the 417 ramps here are the only fast way east
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About these photographs. Openly licensed images geotagged in or near Bayshore, found on Wikimedia Commons and served from there with full attribution. Inline photos elsewhere on the page may still come from the site's shared Ottawa library.