Lansdowne Park

Lansdowne Park — where the capital keeps its stadium, its cattle castle and its Sunday market

Lansdowne Park is not a park in the quiet sense. It is roughly forty acres in the middle of The Glebe, alongside the Rideau Canal, where a professional football stadium, a hockey arena, a Victorian exhibition hall that once hosted Stanley Cup games, a farmers’ market with dozens of vendors, an orchard, a skate park and a water plaza all occupy the same block. It has been Ottawa’s fairground since the nineteenth century and its civic gathering place ever since — noisy on game days, entirely different on a Sunday morning when the market fills the space between two heritage buildings.

Highlights

• The Aberdeen Pavilion — the “Cattle Castle”, raised in 1898 by the Dominion Bridge Company to a design by Ottawa architect Moses C. Edey, reportedly finished in two months and inspired by London’s Crystal Palace. Its steel arches enclose about 3,000 square metres of column-free space. The Ottawa Hockey Club built a rink inside it in 1902, and it hosted Stanley Cup challenge matches in 1904 — making it the oldest surviving building in which the Cup was contested.
• The Horticulture Building — built in 1914, originally as a winter curling venue, and physically moved to a new position during the 2012–2014 redevelopment. Its sixteen-foot windows, exposed beams and barn-board interior now serve art shows, markets and community events.
• TD Place — the stadium and arena at the heart of the site, home to the Ottawa Redblacks of the Canadian Football League, the Ottawa 67’s of the Ontario Hockey League, Atlético Ottawa of the Canadian Premier League and Ottawa Rapid FC.
• The Ottawa Farmers’ Market — Sundays through the year, outdoors between the two heritage buildings in the warm months and indoors when the weather turns, with dozens of regional growers, bakers and makers.
• The water plaza and play area — fifty-two dancing water jets paired with the “Uplift” art installation, plus a fully accessible children’s play area, which together make the site work for families on non-event days.
• The Algonquin Teaching Circle — a planted circle with seven trees, acknowledging that the whole site sits on unceded Algonquin Anishinàbe territory, alongside public artworks including “Moving Surfaces” and the “Peace Flowers” mural.

What you’ll find

Think of Lansdowne as three overlapping places: a sports venue, a heritage precinct and a public green. The stadium and arena take the eastern portion, the two heritage halls define the western side with an open square between them, and the landscaped ground — lawn, orchard, gardens and play areas — fills in around them, with the Rideau Canal running just beyond. Because it is a working urban site rather than a preserved park, parts of it change: the redevelopment now debated under the name Lansdowne 2.0 has kept sections in flux, the Great Lawn and the sledding hill have been closed at times, and the Aberdeen Pavilion has been through major repair work. Check what is open before you plan around a specific feature.

• Two designated heritage buildings, the 1898 Aberdeen Pavilion and the 1914 Horticulture Building.
• TD Place stadium and arena, plus a public skate park with beginner-friendly ramps.
• An outdoor refrigerated skating court in winter that converts to basketball courts in the warm months.
• A large open lawn used for concerts, festivals, informal sport and outdoor film nights.
• An heirloom orchard harvested each autumn and a civic garden of demonstration beds with an ethno-botanical focus.
• An accessible children’s play area, a water plaza, level paved circulation throughout and hundreds of bicycle parking spaces.

Things to do — and who it’s for

• Sports fans — four professional clubs across football, hockey and soccer play here, which means a home fixture most weeks of the year.
• Food shoppers and cooks — the Sunday farmers’ market is one of the best in eastern Ontario, and it runs indoors through the winter rather than shutting down.
• Families — accessible play structures, the dancing water jets in summer, the refrigerated skating court in winter and enough open ground to let children run.
• Heritage and architecture visitors — a national historic site and an Edwardian exhibition hall in one square, both still in daily use rather than roped off.
• Skaters and teenagers — a purpose-built skate park with beginner ramps, plus the ice court and basketball courts by season.
• Festival and concert-goers — the grounds host outdoor film nights, salsa evenings, seasonal markets and large music events through the summer.

Getting there & practical

Lansdowne sits in the heart of The Glebe, directly beside the Rideau Canal and an easy walk from the canal pathway. OC Transpo routes 6 and 7 serve the site directly, with extra service laid on for major events, and on event days transit is included with your ticket for a window before and after the game or concert — which is by far the easiest way in, because local parking effectively vanishes. There is a large paid underground garage on site and more than six hundred bicycle parking spaces, and in summer the canal pathway makes cycling here genuinely pleasant. The grounds are free to enter and open daily from early morning until late evening, roughly from five in the morning to eleven at night; stadium and arena events are ticketed separately, and individual venues keep their own hours. The site is fully accessible, with level paved routes throughout. Allow an hour to walk the grounds and the heritage buildings, a morning for the market, or a full evening for a match.

When to visit

Spring brings the site back to life: the football and soccer seasons open, the outdoor market moves back out of doors, and the canal beside the park reopens to boats in May. Summer is the busiest and most varied stretch — outdoor film nights, salsa evenings, festivals on the lawn, the water jets running for children and long light that holds past nine in the evening. Autumn is arguably the site’s signature season, because it is the one that connects most directly to its history as a fairground: the orchard is harvested, the market is at its fullest with regional produce, and football fills the stadium on crisp afternoons. Winter is not a shoulder season in Ottawa, it is a programme of its own — the refrigerated skating court opens, the farmers’ market moves indoors under heritage steelwork, the hockey season runs at the arena, and the Rideau Canal Skateway freezes alongside the grounds when conditions allow. Come dressed for it: January regularly sits in the minus teens, and a market morning followed by a skate is a genuinely Ottawa way to spend a Sunday.

Good to know

The land became public in 1847, when Bytown received about twenty-four and a half acres from the Province of Canada and later acquired more. It hosted the thirtieth Provincial Agricultural and Arts Association exhibition in 1875 and the first public demonstration of the telephone in Canada in 1877. The city bought further land and buildings in 1883, the Central Canada Exhibition Association was formed in 1888 and opened its first fair on 20 September of that year, and in 1890 the grounds were named for the 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, Governor General from 1883 to 1888. The Aberdeen Pavilion followed in 1898, named for the sitting Governor General, Lord Aberdeen, a supporter of the agricultural fair movement; it served as a troop depot during the Boer War and the First World War and an induction centre in the Second. In 1947 the site held the Marian Congress, drawing crowds counted in the hundreds of thousands, and in the early 1950s professional baseball played here. Lansdowne has staged Grey Cup finals and hosted football matches during the 1976 Olympic Games. The pavilion nearly did not survive: city council voted to demolish it in 1991, reversed itself in 1992, and the restored building reopened in 1994; it had been designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1982 and named a National Historic Site of Canada in 1983, and in 2000 the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada listed it among the country’s finest buildings. The Central Canada Exhibition ran here for 122 consecutive years before ending in 2010, and the redevelopment of 2012 to 2014 added the underground garage, retail and residential blocks and reworked the open space into what stands today.

Visitor tips

• Come on a Sunday morning for the market and stay for the heritage buildings — it is the one time the site feels like a neighbourhood rather than a venue.
• On event days, ride transit. Routes 6 and 7 run extra service, your event ticket covers the fare within a window around the game, and driving into The Glebe on a match day is a bad plan.
• Check current closures before you go. Parts of the grounds, including the Great Lawn, the sledding hill and the Aberdeen Pavilion, have been shut at times for redevelopment and repair work.

Questions & answers

Is Lansdowne Park free to visit? The grounds are free and open to the public daily, roughly from five in the morning to eleven at night. Stadium and arena events, and some festivals, require tickets, but walking the site, the market square and the gardens costs nothing.

What is the Aberdeen Pavilion? A Victorian exhibition hall built in 1898 by the Dominion Bridge Company to Moses C. Edey’s design, nicknamed the “Cattle Castle”. It encloses roughly 3,000 square metres without interior columns, hosted Stanley Cup challenge games in 1904, was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1983 and reopened after restoration in 1994.

Which teams play at TD Place? The Ottawa Redblacks in the Canadian Football League, the Ottawa 67’s in the Ontario Hockey League, Atlético Ottawa in the Canadian Premier League and Ottawa Rapid FC.

When is the farmers’ market? Sundays, year-round. It sets up outdoors between the heritage buildings in the warmer months and moves inside once the weather turns cold, with dozens of local growers, bakers and artisans.

How do I get there by public transport? OC Transpo routes 6 and 7 stop at the site, with additional service on major event days. If you hold a ticket to an event at TD Place, transit is included for a window before and after it.

Is there anything for children? Yes — a fully accessible play area, a water plaza with fifty-two dancing jets in summer, a skate park with beginner ramps, and a refrigerated outdoor skating court in winter that becomes basketball courts in the warm months.

Why is it called Lansdowne? The grounds were named in 1890 for the 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, who served as Governor General of Canada from 1883 to 1888.

What happened to the Central Canada Exhibition? The fair, first held on the grounds in 1888, ran for 122 consecutive years and came to an end in 2010, shortly before the 2012–2014 redevelopment reshaped the site.

Is everything open right now? Not necessarily. The site is being reworked under the plan known as Lansdowne 2.0, and features including the Great Lawn, the sledding hill and the Aberdeen Pavilion have been closed at various points for construction and repairs, so it is worth checking before you build a visit around one of them.