William Pittman Lett

Born in County Wexford, Ireland, in 1819, he came to Upper Canada as an infant and grew up in the region that would become Ottawa. He went on to build a varied career as a journalist, civil servant, and poet, and is especially remembered as Ottawa’s first city clerk, serving the city for decades as it changed from Bytown into the capital of Canada.

His writing stayed closely tied to local life. Alongside his civic work, he wrote verse and prose about the people, politics, landscapes, and everyday energy of 19th-century Ottawa, which is why he is often remembered as one of the city’s early literary voices.

He died in Ottawa in 1892. Today, he stands out as a figure who connected public life and literary life at a formative moment in the city’s history.