Capital History was first conceived for Canada 150. At the time, Dean noticed that while national stories — like the Battle of Vimy Ridge — were being celebrated with events and recognition, local history was mostly left out of coverage. So, when funding was up for grabs to support projects for the nation’s milestone anniversary, Dean put together a proposal. “We wanted to tell stories about everyday people, working people, and their contributions to making Canada what it was.”

The boxes cover a wide range of stories. Some highlight the city’s sports history, like one showing the Ottawa Alerts women’s hockey team from the 1910s and another showcasing Ottawa’s St. Anthony Italia Soccer Club. Others feature figures like Filip Konowal, the only Ukrainian Canadian who has been awarded the Victoria Cross, and places like the Senate of Canada building, back when it used to be a train station.

After 17 initial boxes in 2017, four more waves of the project brought the total to 60 across the city, with the highest concentrations on Elgin Street and around Byward Market. The boxes come from many collaborations, such as with the Worker’s History Museum, the city, several of Ottawa’s business improvement associations and the National Capital Commission. Some partnerships involved graduate and undergraduate university students from Dean’s classes at Carleton back when he was still teaching. “They loved it because they were doing projects, and their essay became a traffic control box as opposed to something that goes in my filing cabinet and then gets destroyed (after retirement),” Dean says.

Students were given the locations of boxes and then went and found stories to go with them through archives, interviews and spending time in the neighbourhood. “It was a very unorthodox way of doing class. We didn’t have readings or a lecture, we were just let loose to go into the archives and look at stuff,” says Tia Wong, a local artist and former student of Dean’s.