This morning, I visited the Nepean Museum, which presents the history of Nepean from 1792 to the present day. In 1792, Nepean was established, encompassing a vast territory; it included what is now the central area of Ottawa west of the Rideau River. In 1850, Nepean was incorporated as a township within Carleton County, and Bytown (one of its villages) was incorporated as a town. In 1855, Bytown became a city and was renamed Ottawa. Over the next 100 years, the City of Ottawa would annex various parts of Nepean, such as Centretown, The Glebe, Ottawa East, Ottawa South, Hintonburg, Westboro and Carlington. In 1978, Nepean became a city in its own right until, in 2001, it was amalgamated along with 10 other municipalities into the new city of Ottawa.

While touring the Nepean Museum today, I saw several references to the Great Fire of 1870. Back at home, I found a document prepared by the Perth & District Historical Society on this event, known as a "conflagration." The National Fire Protection Association defines conflagrations as "sweeping fires that spread beyond control to destroy cities or large areas of built-up property." The historical document states:

In August of 1870, a conflagration that would become known as ‘The Great Fire’, swept the Ottawa Valley, from Lanark County’s northern Ramsay Township, southeast along the Ottawa River, through Carleton County, and then back across Lanark County through the Townships of Montague, North Elmsley and North Burgess. In the valley, no fire like it had been seen before nor experienced since, no natural disaster ever took so many lives before or since, and none caused as much property damage until the ‘The Great Ice Storm’ of 1998.

This afternoon, I asked my mom about the Great Fire in the Ottawa Valley. Though this was significantly before her time, she did recall another major fire, namely, the conflagration in Lanark Village in the summer of 1959. I imagine that the fire was still a topic of discussion in the spring of 1960 when my parents and oldest siblings moved to Ferguson Falls, which is 10 km east of Lanark Village. A 1962 report by the National Research Council describes the fire:

The conflagration which occurred on 15 June 1959 in Lanark, Ontario, destroyed approximately 33 buildings representing almost the entire business centre of this village of 950 people. The fire started in the Campbell Sash and Door Factory at the corner of Owen and George Streets shortly after noon and spread rapidly down the main street in a southerly direction.

The report identified five factors that contributed to the extensive fire: (1) the large supply of combustible material in the woodworking plant where the fire began, (2) the high wind, which carried burning fragments over a large area of the village, (3) the absence of a piped water supply in the village, (4) the presence of wood-shingle roofs, and (5) the close spacing of buildings.

Today's discoveries are a fitting preface for the next section in my series about conducting a life history interview with an older family member or friend. The series is based on William Fletcher's book Recording Your Family History. The first post in the series provided an introduction to recording your family history and subsequent installments suggested questions to ask the interviewee about their grandparents, parents, siblings, childhood, youth, courtship and marriage, parenting and grandparenting. This post focuses on historical events.

In his book, Fletcher notes that "Each generation is shaped by the times, and this chapter helps you to direct your narrator's memory to observations about a wide range of historical events and personalities." Because Fletcher published his book in the 1980s, I had to discard some of his early references—for example, the start of the 20th century and the First World War—and to add some to reflect significant moments in more recent history as well as events relevant to Canada.

Fletcher concludes this chapter with the prompt: "Is there anything else that I forgot to ask about, or that you would like to say about your life in the twentieth century?"

I may add other questions to this post as I think of them or as they are suggested to me. I often consult this series of posts when chatting with my mom, so they are proving to be a helpful repository of questions for our family history discussions.