Carry It Forward

Honestly? It's a 10-minute drive from most of our homes.

153 years of history. Over 10,000 artifacts. Records that go back to 1818, when this land was first settled by Irish soldiers after the War of 1812. An exhibit on the 1870 fire that nearly erased Stittsville from the map.

And most of us have never walked through the doors of the Goulbourn Museum.

That says something bigger about where we are as a community.

Stittsville is growing fast. New homes. New streets. New families. Nearly half of every family in this town has moved since 2016 — my family's included. We chose this community. We're raising our family here. We're putting down roots.

But here's what I keep coming back to.

If we keep building without protecting the stories, the places, and the identity that built this community in the first place — growth starts to feel empty. New subdivisions with no anchor. New neighbourhoods with no name. New residents with nowhere to learn what this place actually is.

That's not progress. That's amnesia.

A strong community doesn't erase its history to make room for the future.

It carries its history forward.

That looks like real things, not nice words:

• A council that treats the Goulbourn Museum as a destination, not a footnote.

• Heritage signage along Stittsville Main Street, so a daily walk becomes a self-guided tour.

• A real line in the City budget so the Goulbourn Museum's doors are open more than a few days a week.

• Heritage protections built into how we approve new developments, so growth carries our story forward instead of paving over it.

None of this is expensive. None of it is impossible. It just hasn't been anybody's priority.

Ward 6 deserves leadership that cares about both progress and preservation. About zoning and identity. Growth and memory.

Because people don't just want development.

They want belonging.

A community feels like home when its kids know its story. When a new family closing on a house in Fernbank can drive ten minutes and see where their address came from. When long-time residents feel their memory matters, and people who arrived last year feel they've been let in.

That's the kind of councillor I want to be.

I'm Sheetal Narwal.

Ward 6.

October 26.

Show up for the future of our community.

www.sheetalnarwal.ca

Sources:

Nearly half of Stittsville's homes built since 2016: Glen Gower — Population Growth in Stittsville

Goulbourn Museum — building dates from 1872 / former Township Town Hall, SCORCHED: The Great Fire of 1870 exhibit, land acknowledgment to the Algonquin Anishinàbeg: City of Ottawa — Goulbourn Museum page

Over 10,000 artifacts in the collection: Goulbourn Museum

1818 Irish military settlement (Goulbourn Township founding after the War of 1812): Wikipedia — Stittsville