Thomas Ahearn

Ahearn co-founded the Ottawa Car Company, a manufacturer of streetcars for Canadian markets.

[7] The use of this invention that year to prepare a meal which he delivered by streetcar to the Windsor Hotel caused the Ottawa Journal to say "...everything had been cooked by electricity, the first instance on record..."[2] Thomas Ahearn filed eleven Canadian patents in all.

After running as a vast and very successful private operation for over half a century, it was later taken over by the Ottawa Transportation Commission.

In 1901, the Ottawa Electric Railway Company built a 2000-foot canal just north of the Britannia Boathouse Club to generate Hydroelectric power on the Deschênes Rapids.

Although the hydroelectric project was abandoned as unfeasible, the unfinished canal was used in 1951 as the basis of the Britannia Yacht Club`s main and inner harbour, which provide 250 wet moorings, fuel and pumpout facilities, for both sail and power boats.

Ahearn & Soper is an Ottawa company formed as an electrical engineering and contracting business in 1881 by Thomas Ahearn and Warren Young Soper, former manager of Dominion Telegraph Company's local office.

In 1926, they built the Ottawa Electric Building (Albert Ewan, Architect) which still stands on 56 Sparks.

Margaret was the daughter of Alexander Fleck, President of the Vulcan Iron Works Co., Ottawa, and his wife, Lilias Walker.

Margaret was born in Montreal, and was educated at the McGill Model School and at Bute House.

A bronze plaque on the side of the pillar facing the fountains bears a relief of Ahearn, sculpted by Felix De Weldon, with his name and the years of his birth and death.

The monument was also altered at that time; the drinking fountains were removed, and the longer wall was lowered to the level of the bench.