Suburban Centres: New Retail Environments

In the mid-1950s, businessman E.P. Taylor founded the Don Mills Development Corporation Ltd.[1] He planned Don Mills, a residential development project on Toronto's outskirts. To move beyond city-centred living, Don Mills replaced the community centre at the city’s core with a new convenience centre. This became a commercial space shaped by rising consumerism rather than by social or democratic ideals. The convenience centre, or shopping centre, drew on prewar American building types and soon spread through suburban sites.[2]

Suburban retail environments continued to transform through further innovations. Postwar suburban planning projects established strip malls and shopping centres across suburban and rural areas.[3] Designers drew inspiration from drive-in market buildings: commercial clusters with multi-story parking garages. These projects considered transportation, population, thoroughfares, and architectural needs for each settlement. However, Don Mills was not the first to take on such a project. One notable early example is the 1946 Bellevue Shopping Square in Bellevue, Washington.[4] In Canada, landmark examples include the 1950 Park Royal Shopping Centre in Vancouver, B.C., and the 1955 Westgate Shopping Centre in Ottawa, ON.

As Ottawa’s first shopping centre, Westgate’s origins begin in the postwar reconstruction, modern development, and suburban expansion of the National Capital Region. In the Kitchissippi Ward of Ottawa, Ontario, a 19th-century farm property at the south end of lot 33 in Nepean Township sat vacant for years.[5] The triangular plot, later becoming Westgate Shopping Centre, was considered undesirable and valueless for decades. Marsh, bush, and seasonal flooding from Cave Creek prevented its sale and development until the 1940s. In 1942, Hampton Park Ltd. sold portions of land facing Carling Avenue to local homebuilders, business-owners, and entrepreneurs. In the 1940s, a storage building and two gas stations appeared on the lot.

From 1951 to 1952, Harold Shenkman, a local real estate developer, bought several parcels on the site to build a shopping centre.[6] However, the Federal District Commission announced plans for an expressway (now the Queensway) to replace abandoned rail lines alongside the lot, prompting Shenkman to delay construction for one year.[7] By spring 1954, after securing more properties from local residents, he expanded the site to 12 acres and began construction at a cost of $2 million. 

The price, the land, and the plan to build a shopping centre on the city’s outskirts were widely viewed as risky, even foolish, for Shenkman.[8] In the mid-1950s, the area was just an isolated but growing postwar suburb on Ottawa's western edge.[9] Carling Avenue nearby was little more than a country road. However, Westgate Shopping Centre was unique. Built in a previously vacant field between Carling Avenue and Merivale Road, Westgate got its name because it formed the western gate to the National Capital Region.  

Westgate would be more than Ottawa’s first shopping centre. It became a vehicle for postwar architects, modern designers, and suburban planners to adapt American shopping centres for Canadians. Westgate was built as a centre outside the downtown core. It offered unique, convenient, and trendy experiences to citizens beyond the Byward Market, Sparks Street, and Bank Street commercial areas.[10] 

As a postwar Ontario shopping centre, Westgate met Ottawa’s suburban needs with its location by the Queensway and large parking lot, features that attracted visitors.[11] Westgate thus exemplified the belief of the Hungarian-born architect and engineer E.G. Faludi that shopping centres and suburban planning must be closely linked in restructuring postwar Canadian cities.[12]

[1] Marie-Josée Therrien and France Vanlaethem, “Modern Architecture in Canada 1940-1967,” in Back from Utopia: The Challenge of the Modern Movement, eds. Hubert-Jan Henket and Hilde Heynen (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2002), 130.

[2] Marie-Josée Therrien, “Shopping Malls in Post-war Ontario,” Docomomo Journal 38 (2008): 39, https://doi.org/10.52200/docomomo.38. 

[3] Therrien, “Shopping Malls in Post-war Ontario,” 39-42.

[4] James Powell, “Temples of Commerce,” The Historical Society of Ottawa, accessed October 17, 2025. https://www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/important-public-and-private-buildings-in-the-city/temples-of-commerce. 

[5] Dave Allston, “Did you know that Ottawa’s first mall was built in Kitchissippi?” Kitchissippi Times (Ottawa, ON), May 20, 2015, https://kitchissippi.com/westgate-shopping-centre/. 

[6] Charlie Senack, “Ottawa’s oldest mall closes today after 70 years,” Kitchissippi Times (Ottawa, ON), October 31, 2025, https://kitchissippi.com/goodbye-to-westgate-a-look-at-the-malls-historic-past/. 

[7] Allston, “Did you know that Ottawa’s first mall was built in Kitchissippi?” https://kitchissippi.com/westgate-shopping-centre/. 

[8] Allston, “Did you know that Ottawa’s first mall was built in Kitchissippi?” https://kitchissippi.com/westgate-shopping-centre/. 

[9] Powell, “Temples of Commerce,” https://www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/important-public-and-private-buildings-in-the-city/temples-of-commerce. 

[10] Allston, “Did you know that Ottawa’s first mall was built in Kitchissippi?” https://kitchissippi.com/westgate-shopping-centre/. 

[11] Andrew Waldron, “The West End,” in Exploring the Capital: An Architectural Guide to the Ottawa Region (Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2017), 350.

[12] Therrien, “Shopping Malls in Post-war Ontario,” 40.