Ottawa tourist information

The Ottawa region was long home to First Nations peoples who were part of the Algonquin. The Algonquin called the river the Kichi Sibi or Kichissippi, meaning "Great River". The first European settlement in the region was that of Philemon Wright who started a community on the Quebec side of the river in 1800. Wright discovered that transporting timber by river from the Ottawa Valley to Montreal was possible and the area was soon booming based almost entirely off timber.

Rideau Canal Project
In the years following the War of 1812, in addition to settling some military regiment families, the government began sponsored immigration schemes which brought over Irish Catholics and Protestants to settle the Ottawa area, which began a steady stream of Irish immigration there in the next few decades. Along with French Canadians who crossed over from Quebec, these two groups provided the bulk of labourers involved in the Rideau Canal project and the booming timber trade, both instrumental in putting Ottawa on the map.

The region's population grew significantly when the canal was completed and constructed by Colonel John By in 1832. It was intended to provide a secure route between Montreal and Kingston on Lake Ontario, by-passing the stretch of the St. Lawrence River bordering New York State (with the 1812 conflict with the U.S.A. being in recent memory). Construction of the canal began at the northern end, where Colonel By set up a military barracks on what later became Parliament Hill, and laid out a townsite that soon became known as Bytown. Original city leaders of Bytown include a number of Wright's sons, most notably Ruggles Wright. Nicholas Sparks, Braddish Billings and Abraham Dow who were the first to settle on the Ontario side of the Ottawa river.

Uppertown
The west side of the canal became known as "Uppertown" where the Parliament buildings are located, while the east side of the canal (wedged between the canal and Rideau River) was known as the "Lowertown". At that time, Lowertown was a crowded, boisterous shanty town, frequently receiving the worst of disease epidemics, such as the Cholera outbreak in 1832 or later typhus in 1847.

Timber Industry
Ottawa became the centre for lumber milling and square-cut timber industry in Canada, and in fact for North America as a whole. From there, it quickly expanded further up (or westward along) the Ottawa River and logs were boomed by raftsmen great distances down the river to the mills. Bytown was renamed Ottawa in 1855.

The Queen Chooses Ottawa
On December 31, 1857, Queen Victoria was asked to choose a common capital for the then province of Canada (modern Quebec and Ontario) and chose Ottawa. There are old folk tales about how she made the choice: that she did so by sticking her hatpin on a map roughly halfway between Toronto and Montreal, or that she liked watercolours she had seen of the area. While such stories have no historical basis, they do illustrate how arbitrary the choice of Ottawa seemed to Canadians at the time. While Ottawa is now a major metropolis and Canada's fourth largest city, at the time it was a sometimes unruly logging town in the hinterland, far away from the colony's main cities, Quebec City and Montreal in Canada East, and Kingston and Toronto in Canada West.

In fact, the Queen's advisors had her pick Ottawa for three important reasons: first, it was the only settlement of any significant size located right on the border of Canada East and Canada West (Quebec/Ontario border today), making it a compromise between the two colonies and their French and English populations; second, the War of 1812 had shown how vulnerable the major cities were to American attack, since they were all located very close to the border; third, the government owned a large parcel of land on a spectacular spot overlooking the Ottawa River. Ottawa's position in the back country made it more defensible, while still allowing easy transportation via the Ottawa River to Canada East and the Rideau Canal to Canada West. Two other considerations were that Ottawa was at a point nearly exactly midway between Toronto and Quebec City (about 500 km) and that the small size of the town made it less likely that politically motivated mobs could go on a rampage and destroy government buildings, as had been the case in the previous Canadian capitals.

Fire
The original Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa was destroyed by fire on February 3, 1916. The House of Commons and Senate were temporarily relocated to the recently constructed Victoria Memorial Museum, currently the Canadian Museum of Nature, located about 1 km south of Parliament Hill on Metcalfe Street. A new Centre Block was completed in 1922, the centre-piece of which is a dominant Gothic revival styled structure known as the Peace Tower which has become a common emblem of the city.

We Started the Cold War
On September 5, 1945, only weeks after the end of World War II, Ottawa was the site of the event that many people consider to be the official start of the Cold War. A Soviet cipher clerk, Igor Gouzenko, defected from the Soviet embassy with over 100 secret documents. At first, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) refused to take the documents, since the Soviets were still allies of Canada and Britain, and the newspapers were not interested in the story. After hiding out for a night in a neighbour's apartment, Gouzenko finally persuaded the RCMP to look at his evidence, which provided proof of a massive Soviet spy networking operating in western countries, and, indirectly, led to the discovery that the Soviets were working on an atomic bomb to match that of the Americans.

Ottawa is served by VIA Rail passenger service, a number of airlines that fly into Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport, and inter-city bus companies such as Greyhound through the Ottawa Bus Central Station.

Freeways
The capital city of Canada is also served by a network of freeways, the main one being provincial Highway 417 (called The Queensway), Ottawa-Carleton Regional Road 174 (Formerly Provincial Highway 17), and the newly constructed Highway 416 (Veterans' Memorial Highway), connecting Ottawa to the rest of the 400-Series Highway network in Ontario. Highway 417 is also the Ottawa portion of the Trans-Canada Highway. The city also has a few Scenic Parkways (Promenades), such as the Ottawa River Parkway, and has a freeway connection to Quebec Autoroute 5, in Hull. For a complete listing of the parkways and roads in Ottawa.

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Rapid Transit System
Ottawa's main mass transit service is OC Transpo (provided by the City of Ottawa). The Ottawa rapid transit system includes the Transitway (a network of mostly grade-separated, extremely high-frequency, reserved bus rapid transit lanes with full stations instead of stops) and a light rail system called the O-Train (A new light rail system is being considered for connecting the north-south and the east-west sections of the city). Both OC Transpo and the Quebec-based Société de transport de l'Outaouais (STO) operate bus services between Ottawa and Gatineau. A transfer or bus pass of one is accepted on the other without having to pay a top-up fare on regular routes.

The Rideau Canal
The Rideau Canal, which starts in Kingston, Ontario, winds its way through the city. The final flight of locks on the canal are between Parliament Hill and the Chateau Laurier. Also, during the winter season the canal is usually open and is a form of transportation downtown for about 7.8 km for ice skaters (from a point near Carleton University to the Rideau Centre) and forms the world's longest skating rink.

Cycling and Pedestrian
There is a large network of pedestrian and cycling trails that wind their way through much of the city, including trails along the Ottawa River, Rideau River, and Rideau Canal. In combination with a growing network of on-street bicycle lanes, it is possible to cycle between many of the major sites and office areas in the region.

Ottawa sits at the confluence of three major rivers: the Ottawa River, the Gatineau River and the Rideau River. The Ottawa and Gatineau rivers were historically important in the logging and lumber industries, and the Rideau as part of the Rideau Canal system connecting the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River with the Ottawa River.

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