The Kanata neighbourhood that could get a new heritage designation
The neighbourhood was designed in the 1960s as a satellite city, what might be thought of today as a 15-minute city.
By Aedan Helmer, Ottawa Citizen
Published Feb 09, 2026 | Last updated 1 hour ago | 7 minute read
When prolific Ottawa developer Bill Teron broke ground on a new self-contained “satellite city” that would become Kanata in the 1960s, he envisioned a community from the viewpoint of a child pedalling a tricycle.
Clusters of homes with similar mid-century architectural styles were bounded by natural green space with pathways and local roads — and no through traffic — that would allow children to walk or bike to school without crossing any major streets.
He rejected the notion of Kanata as a “bedroom community” and instead designed self-contained neighbourhoods centred around schools and natural spaces that would also provide shopping, medical and civic services, recreation and even employment with an adjacent technology park.
The community of Beaverbrook was the first of Teron’s planned neighbourhoods to be constructed, with 800 homes on 5.5 hectares of “rugged romantic” land, as Teron once described it, on the western edge of the Greenbelt.
“He didn’t know it at the time, but it’s now called a 15-minute community,” said Neil Thomson, president of the Kanata Beaverbrook Community Association, one of the chief proponents behind a long-standing lobby for the community to be designated as a heritage conservation district.
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