Published in The BANAR November 2014 by Evelyn Budd.
The area in which we now live was once called Green’s Creek after pioneer Robert Green, who chose to build his home and a sawmill near the creek that ran off the Ottawa River.
The community grew quickly and soon covered the area from Greens Creek to the west, east to where Bradley Estates is now located, north to the Montreal Road and south to the Canadian Pacific Railway track (now a bicycle trail) on the border of the Mer Bleue.
By the 1850’s, three families of Dagg’s had arrived and it became known as Daggville or the Daggs Settlement.
By 1880 the community needed a post office. Mr. Robert Blackburn, who was a Reeve of Gloucester in 1864, petitioned the Post Office Department and eventually a new post office opened. In appreciation Blackburn was adopted as its official name.
Blackburn was growing quickly and had schools, churches, a sawmill, cheese factory, blacksmith shop, tannery, train station and hotel. Settlers were either farmers or gardeners on their 5 to 300 acres. Ottawa was growing as well so the Blackburn people travelled to the By Ward Market to sell their hay, meat, eggs and vegetables. By the 1950s small homes were being built with many of the people working in Ottawa, particularly at the NRC on Montreal Road.
Blackburn lost most of its land to the National Capital Commission (NCC) in the mid 1950s, and many families were forced to relocate their homes and farms. A small group of homeowners with the help of Costain Developments negotiated with the NCC and were successful in saving their land from expropriation. In the spring of 1967 families started to arrive to the new Blackburn Hamlet subdivision. The community has continued to grow and continues to be a very unique community.