The City’s Community and Protective Services Committee has approved a handful of commemorative naming proposals for City properties.
Among them, the Studio Theatre in Meridian Theatres Centrepointe will be renamed the “Les Lye Studio Theatre.”
Lye was a long-time broadcaster on 580 CFRA and CJOH-TV and most well-known for the hit Canadian children’s show You Can’t Do That on Television. Lye was also an actor and contributed to the theatre community in the capital, often performing at the very theatre that will bear his name.
He passed away in 2009 at the age of 84.
Another well-known name in the community, Rabbi Reuven Bulka, will be found on a park in the Alta Vista area.
Featherston Park, on Virginia Drive, will be named the “Rabbi Bulka Kindness Park.”
Bulka has been the rabbi of the Congregation Machzikei Hadas since 1967. He had a weekly radio show on 580 CFRA called “Sunday Night With Rabbi Bulka.” He is also the founder of Kind Canada, an Ottawa-based charity committed to spreading kindness, particularly through Kindness Week. Bulka is a member of the Order of Canada, has been given the key to the City of Ottawa and is involved in numerous charity fundraising events and sits on the Community Advisory Board for the Ottawa Integrative Cancer Centre and is Chair of the Trillium Gift of Life Network.
Other naming proposals that were approved include renaming a park at 73 West Ridge Drive the Alfred McCoy Park, after the prominent Stittsville businessman; the seniors’ room in the Hunt Club Riverside Park Community Centre will be named after Kathy Ablett, a nurse and 27-year catholic school board trustee and; a future park, set to be built at 315 Haliburton Heights, will be named the Mark Yakabuski Park, after the former Ottawa 67s player and minor-league hockey coach, who, despite suffering a traumatic spinal injury in 2016, continued to inspire young hockey players until his death in 2018.
The naming proposals must still be approved by full city council.
