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On November 27, 2024, The Ottawa Hospital’s Civic Campus will mark a full century of caring for our community. What better way to honor this landmark occasion than with a beautiful piece of local, hand-drawn art?

In the summer of 2023, illustrator Colin White accepted one of his greatest challenges as an artist—to draw The Ottawa Hospital’s Civic Campus.

It’s not that Colin can’t draw buildings. In fact, architectural sketching has been his bread and butter for the past nearly 15 years. Rather, it was the scale and detail of the building that posed the challenge. He is known for his nostalgic renderings of well-known Ottawa buildings. But… small ones… of the two- or sometimes three-storey variety. 

Despite the scale of this task, this was a six-storey project he was willing to take on. He knew that it would be used to help mark an incredible milestone in The Ottawa Hospital’s history—the Civic Campus’ 100^th anniversary. 

Equipped with “the latest surgical appliances known to medical science”

A few weeks before it opened on November 27, 1924, the Ottawa Evening Journal declared the city’s newest hospital “one of the outstanding institutions of its kind on the North American continent.”

Innovations boasted by the Civic Hospital, which cost $3.5 million to construct, included operating rooms equipped with “the latest surgical appliances known to medical science.”

In addition to how the Civic Hospital would modernize health care in Ottawa, the building itself was perceived to have been designed and crafted with what could only be described as surgical precision. The same newspaper article states that “to the minutest detail the most care and thought were expended to assure that nothing inferior or unsatisfactory crept into the undertaking.”

Nearly one hundred years later, White spends an early autumn morning observing the finer details of the building, which was designed by Boston and Toronto-based architects Edward Stevens and Frederick Lee.

Standing with a bright blue sky overhead and the Experimental Farm at his back, White looks at the building with pen and sketch pad in hand.

“It’s very detailed. Talking about the craftsmanship and the architectural detailing—there’s certainly a lot of that going on,” he says, pointing out the turquoise colours that appear on the old and weathered exterior.

100 years of incredible moments

It took White a few months to perfect his sketch of one of Ottawa’s most recognizable buildings. Numbered prints are now available on his website for people looking to commemorate this significant milestone.

In addition to marking this important anniversary with Colin White’s artwork, we will spend the next year marking significant moments in the Civic Campus’ history—100 of them to be precise.

Do you have a story about the Civic Hospital that you would like to share? If so, visit 100moments.ca to complete the story submission form. We would love to hear from you!

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