Alta Vista Drive
street in Ottawa, Canada
Alta Vista Drive is a suburban road in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and is the main north-south street in the city's Alta Vista Ward. It runs from Bank Street in the south to Industrial Avenue in the north covering the neighbourhoods of Ridgemont, Alta Vista and Riverview.
Alta Vista was created as the result of major residential developments (notably the Rideau Park and Alta Vista subdivisions) in the region following World War II. First referred to as the "100 foot highway", it was named Churchill Avenue (after Winston Churchill) in 1941. After Ottawa annexed Gloucester Township in July 1950, the road was renamed "Alta Vista Drive", as there was already a Churchill Avenue in Ottawa. The first stretch was built between Smyth Road and Kilborn Avenue in 1939. Gloucester Township Council passed a by-law on May 3, 1937, permitting its construction. The stretch from Kilborn to Randall was built in 1940; the stretch north of Smyth in 1942 (to what is now Terminal Avenue) and south of Randall to Bank Street (then called "Metcalfe Road") in 1947.
Alta Vista originally ran past Industrial and connected with the Vanier Parkway, but the intersection, which also involved Riverside Drive was re-aligned in 1986. Furthermore, in the 1990s, Alta Vista gained bicycle lanes along its entire stretch. Alta Vista is so named for its general height, as the neighbourhoods it runs through are generally higher than the rest of the city (the name means "a view from above" or "high view" in Spanish and Portuguese).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Alta Vista Drive” is street in Ottawa, Canada. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Alta, Vista and Drive, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “street in Ottawa, Canada” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4736010. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1941, 1950, 1939 and 1937.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alta Vista Drive” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.