 
Early Observatories in Canada
The very first building constructed as an observatory in Canada was at Louisbourg, Cape Breton, but it was only used for a year before the astronomer, Joseph Bernard Chabert, returned to France in 1751. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the British military, primarily the Royal Navy, also carried out astronomical observations to improve hydrographic maps in eastern and central Canada. In addition several observatories were built at universities, beginning with the University of New Brunswick in 1851, to instruct students in navigation, surveying and natural phenomena. By century’s end, astronomy was being taught as a scientific discipline in its own right.
Government astronomy in Canada, following Confederation in 1867, was primarily associated with surveyors who needed a means to determine the difference in longitude between their location and Greenwich, England, or Cambridge, Massachusetts—a very challenging exercise requiring highly accurate tables of the positions of astronomical objects and good astronomical instruments. Surveyors were hired by the Geological Survey of Canada (founded in 1841), the Hydrographic Survey (1880s), the Topographic Survey (1880s) and the Geodetic Survey of Canada (1909). Among other things, these astronomer/surveyors laid out boundaries between the United States and Canada, and between the Provinces.
The Troughton & Simms zenith telescope (CSTM 1972.0376), 1872 |
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The Cliff Street Observatory, ca 1900, overlooked the Ottawa River near Parliament Hill. |
One of the earliest instruments in our collection associated with these activities is a zenith telescope (1972.0376*). Made by one of the premier British instrument firms, Troughton & Simms,
this telescope was used to measure when stars passed close to the zenith—the point in the sky exactly overhead. With this instrument one was able to determine latitude of the site and, if one had a chronometer to accurately maintain the time of a known location (Ottawa, Greenwich or Cambridge), one could also determine longitude. This zenith telescope was employed in the survey of the 49th parallel between western Canada and the United States. In Ottawa, the Cliff Street Observatory (near the current Supreme Court of Canada building on Wellington Street) was constructed in the 1880s to house transit telescopes (1976.0300) and precise clocks to determine time and to act as a reference point for surveyors. But in 1898 one of the astronomers, Dr Otto Klotz, had a vision for a grander facility—a “national observatory.”
The Cooke transit telescope (CSTM 1976.0300) was used both at the Cliff Street and Dominion Observatories. |
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Otto Klotz, ca 1910 |
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