History
[edit]
Main article: History of Ottawa
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Ottawa history.
Early history[edit]
The Champlain Sea
The Ottawa Valley became habitable around 10,000 years ago following the natural draining of the Champlain Sea. The first evidence of human presence in the Ottawa Valley are spearpoints dated 8000-8500 years before present. By 6000 years before present, there were robust trading and communications networks. Approximately 3000-3500 years before present, there is definitive evidence of continuously existing settlements, including likely hearths and heavy tools. In closer proximity to the modern bounds of the City of Ottawa, there has been documentation of specific settlements at the mouth of the Gatineau River dating back to 3000-3500 years prior to post-Columbian contact. These findings suggest that these Algonquin people were engaged in foraging, hunting and fishing, but also trade and travel. Three major rivers meet within Ottawa, making it an important trade and travel area for thousands of years. This period ended with the arrival of settlers and colonization of North America by Europeans during and after the 15th century.
European exploration and early development[edit]
In 1610, Étienne Brûlé became the first documented European to navigate the Ottawa River, passing what would become Ottawa on his way to the Great Lakes. Three years later, Samuel de Champlain wrote about the waterfalls in the area and about his encounters with the Algonquin people.
The first non-Indigenous settlement in the area was created by Philemon Wright, a New Englander. Wright founded a lumber town in the area on 7 March 1800 on the north side of the river, across from the present-day city of Ottawa in Hull. He, with five other families and twenty-five labourers, also created an agricultural community called Wright's Town, which would later become Gatineau. Wright pioneered the Ottawa Valley timber trade (soon to be the area's most significant economic activity) by transporting timber by river from the Ottawa Valley to Quebec City.
In the 1820s, news of the British military's impending construction of the Rideau Canal led to land speculation by John Le Breton, a local businessman who bought a land lot on the prediction of the upcoming construction, which led to an alternative canal course being selected. A town was established in 1826 and in 1827 was named after the British military engineer Colonel John By, who was responsible for the Rideau Waterway construction project. The Rideau Canal provided a secure route between Montreal and Kingston on Lake Ontario. It bypassed a vulnerable stretch of the St. Lawrence River bordering the state of New York that had left re-supply ships bound for southwestern Ontario easily exposed to enemy fire during the War of 1812.
Camp used by soldiers and labourers of the Rideau Canal, on the south side of the Ottawa River in 1826. The building of the canal attracted many land speculators to the area.
Colonel By set up military barracks on the site of today's Parliament Hill. He also laid out the streets of the town and created two distinct neighbourhoods named "Upper Town" west of the canal and "Lower Town" east of the canal. Similar to its Upper Canada and Lower Canada namesakes, historically, "Upper Town" was predominantly English-speaking and Protestant, whereas "Lower Town" was mostly French, Irish and Catholic. Bytown's early pioneer period saw Irish labourers cause unrest during the Shiners' War from 1835 to 1845, coming into conflict with French settlers.
Bytown's population grew to 1,000 as the Rideau Canal was completed in 1832. The settlement was incorporated as a town in 1850. In 1855, Bytown was renamed Ottawa and obtained city status. William Pittman Lett was installed as the first city clerk, serving from 1844 to 1891, guiding Ottawa through 36 years of development, leading the hiring of key municipal roles, founding civic organizations, and proposing a set of by-laws for the city.
Starting in the 1850s, entrepreneurs known as lumber barons began to build large sawmills, which produced tens of millions of board feet of timber, such as producing 39 million in 1855 after the USA began accepting imports, against approximately 480 million board feet imported from across Canada in Britain a decade earlier, and eventually rising to 613 million in the early 20th century. Rail lines built in 1854 connected Ottawa to areas south and, from 1886, to the transcontinental rail network via Hull and Lachute, Quebec. By 1885 Ottawa was the only city in Canada whose downtown street-lights were powered entirely by electricity.
Selection as capital[edit]
The selection of Ottawa as a capital city predates the Confederation of Canada. The choice was contentious, with the Parliament of the United Province of Canada holding more than 200 votes over several decades to attempt to settle on a legislative solution to the location of its capital. Political dissension between the Reformist and Tory wings of the political establishment led to the Stony Monday Riot of 1849. During these riots, the Tories violently disrupted a Reformist reception for the Governor General to promote Bytown as capital of the province.
The governor-general of the Province of Canada designated Kingston as the capital in 1841. This was controversial: the cities of Toronto and Montreal, as well as the former capital of Lower Canada, Quebec City, all had legislators dissatisfied with Kingston as the capital, although anglophone merchants in Quebec were the leading group supportive of the Kingston arrangement. In 1842, a vote rejected Kingston as the capital, and study of potential candidates included Bytown, but that option proved less popular than Toronto or Montreal. In 1843, a report by the Executive Council recommended Montreal as the capital, as it was a more fortifiable location and commercial centre. However, the governor-general refused to execute a move without a parliamentary vote. In 1844, the Queen's acceptance of a parliamentary vote moved the capital to Montreal.
In 1849, after an Orange mob burned the Parliament building in Montreal, several votes were held on a new permanent capital. Kingston and Bytown were again considered. However, the winning proposal was for the legislature to alternate sitting in either Quebec City and Toronto, in a policy known as perambulation. Logistical difficulties made this an unpopular arrangement, and an 1856 vote passed for the lower house of parliament to relocate permanently to Quebec City. The move did not proceed, as the upper house refused to approve funding for the relocation.
The funding impasse led to the ending of the legislature's role in determining the seat of government. The legislature requested the Queen determine the seat of government. The Queen then acted on the advice of her governor general Edmund Head, who, after reviewing proposals from various cities, selected the recently renamed Ottawa. The Queen sent a letter to colonial authorities selecting Ottawa as the capital, effective 31 December 1857. George Brown, briefly a co-premier of the Province of Canada, attempted to reverse this decision but was unsuccessful. The Parliament ratified the Queen's choice in 1859, with Quebec serving as interim capital from 1859 to 1865. The relocation process began in 1865, with the first session of Parliament held in the new buildings in 1866. The buildings were generally well received by legislators.
Ottawa in 1859, before construction on Parliament Hill. Two years prior, Queen Victoria selected the city as the permanent capital of the Province of Canada.
Ottawa was recommended by Head as the capital due to palatability with both Upper and Lower Canada. Other considerations also favoured Ottawa. Ottawa's isolated location, surrounded by dense forest far from the Canada–US border and situated on a cliff face, would make it more defensible from attack. Despite the city's regional isolation, there was water transportation access from spring to fall, both to Montreal via the Ottawa River and to Kingston via the Rideau Waterway. Additionally, by 1854 it also had a modern all-season railway (the Bytown and Prescott Railway) that carried passengers, lumber and supplies 82 kilometres (51 miles) to Prescott on the Saint Lawrence River and beyond. Ottawa's small size was also thought to make it less prone to politically motivated mob violence, as had happened in the previous Canadian capitals. Finally, the government already owned the land that eventually became Parliament Hill, which it thought would be an ideal location for the Parliament buildings.
The original Parliament buildings, which included the Centre, East and West Blocks, were constructed between 1859 and 1866 in the Gothic Revival style. Public Works Canada and its architects were not initially well prepared for the relatively shallow-lying bedrock involved in construction and as a result had to redesign architectural drawings, leading to delays. The Library of Parliament and Parliament Hill landscaping were completed in 1876. By 1885 Ottawa was the only city in Canada whose downtown street-lights were powered entirely by electricity.
Post-Confederation and early 20th century[edit]
LeBreton Flats after the 1900 Hull–Ottawa fire. The fire destroyed one-fifth of Ottawa and two-thirds of neighbouring Hull, Quebec.
In 1889, the government distributed 60 "water leases" to local industrialists, which gave them permission to generate electricity and use hydroelectric generators at Chaudière Falls. Public transportation began in 1870 with a horsecar system, overtaken in the 1890s by an electric streetcar system that operated until 1959 and peaked at trackage of 90.5km, including an extension to Hull.
In 1900, a chimney fire spread throughout Hull, destroying two-thirds of the city, including the facilities of major lumber employers and main street buildings. Due to high winds, the fire spread quickly through the wooden buildings that were widespread at the time. It eventually spread to Ottawa, where it destroyed about one-fifth of the buildings from the Lebreton Flats south to Booth Street and down to Dow's Lake. The fire destroyed approximately 3,200 buildings and caused an estimated $300 million in damage (in 2020 Canadian dollars). An estimated 14% of Ottawans and 40% of Hull residents were left homeless. The fire had a disproportionate effect on west-end lower-income neighbourhoods. It had also spread among many lumber yards, a major part of Ottawa's economy.
In 1911, the municipality saw over 80 deaths related to a worse-than-average outbreak of typhoid, caused by sewage disposal affecting the city's drinking water intake from Nepean Bay. Immediate measures taken were insufficient to prevent 1,400 further typhoid cases in 1912, leading to 98 deaths and unsuccessful calls for temporary relocation of the capital to Toronto until the issue was resolved.
Ottawa Post Office, located in Confederation Square, pictured in the early 20th century
On 1 June 1912, the Grand Trunk Railway opened both the Château Laurier hotel and its neighbouring downtown Union Station. On 3 February 1916, the Centre Block of the Parliament buildings was destroyed by a fire. The House of Commons and Senate were temporarily relocated to the recently constructed Victoria Memorial Museum (now the Canadian Museum of Nature) until the completion of the new Centre Block in 1927. The centrepiece of the new Parliament buildings is a dominant Gothic Revival-styled structure known as the Peace Tower.
The location of what is now Confederation Square was a former commercial district centrally located in a triangular downtown area surrounded by historically significant heritage buildings, including the Parliament buildings. It was redeveloped as a ceremonial centre in 1938 as part of the City Beautiful Movement. It became the site of the National War Memorial in 1939 and was designated a National Historic Site in 1984. A new Central Post Office (now the Privy Council of Canada) was constructed in 1939 beside the War Memorial because the original post office building on the proposed Confederation Square grounds had to be demolished.
During the Second World War, the City of Ottawa increased temporary housing in the city for men in the military and their families, with the pavilion at Lansdowne Park being transformed into a barracks, as it had been during the First World War. The Second World War also coincided with expansion and centralization in federal government operations, with the size of the federal public service roughly tripling from 12,000 to 36,000. This expansion was reflected in the erection of new buildings, both temporary and permanent, to accommodate the new workers.
Short film by Canadian Government 1938
Post–Second World War[edit]
V-Day, downtown Ottawa in 1945, to mark the end of World War II
Gréber plan's National Capital Greenbelt surrounding the urban core
The John G. Diefenbaker Building was Ottawa's fourth city hall, from 1958 until 2001.
Ottawa's former industrial appearance was vastly altered by the 1950 Gréber Plan. Prime Minister Mackenzie King hired French architect-planner Jacques Gréber to design an urban plan for managing development in the National Capital Region to make it more aesthetically pleasing and a location more befitting for Canada's political centre. Gréber's plan included the creation of the National Capital Greenbelt, National Arts Centre, the Kichi Zibi Mikan parkway and Queensway highway system. His plan also called for the movement of downtown Union Station (now the Senate of Canada Building) to the suburbs, the removal of the street car system, the decentralization of selected government offices, and the relocation of industries and removal of substandard housing from the downtown.
While not every recommendation in the Grébér Plan was acted upon—for example, city hall was not placed on the east side of the canal—the plan's open space recommendations did lead to the creation of spaces such as the Rideau Canal and Ottawa River pathways. A major precondition to the creation of the Rideau Canal pathway was the elimination of direct rail service into downtown, leading to the abandonment of the Ottawa Train Station as the city's main station.
The 1958 National Capital Act established the National Capital Commission as a crown corporation. It officially began work in 1959. This marked the creation of a permanent political infrastructure for managing the capital region. These included plans from the 1899 Ottawa Improvement Commission (OIC), the Todd Plan in 1903, the Holt Report in 1915 and the Federal District Commission (FDC). The National Capital Commission's structure supplanted the Federal District Commission, which was established in 1927 with a 16-year funding commitment but was reliant on the voluntary transfer of municipal planning authorities from the district's municipalities.
In 1958, a new city hall opened on Green Island near Rideau Falls, where urban renewal had recently transformed this industrial location into a green space. Prior to this, from 1931 to 1958, city hall had been at the Transportation Building adjacent to Union Station (now part of the Rideau Centre). In 2001, Ottawa City Hall returned downtown to a 1990 building on 110 Laurier Avenue West, the home of the now-defunct Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. This new location was close to Ottawa's first (1849–1877) and second (1877–1931) city halls. This new city hall complex also contained an adjacent 19th-century restored heritage building formerly known as the Ottawa Normal School.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, there was a large increase in construction in the National Capital Region, which was followed by large growth in the high-tech industry during the 1980s and 1990s. Ottawa became one of Canada's largest high-tech cities and was nicknamed Silicon Valley North. By the 1980s, Bell Northern Research (later Nortel) employed thousands, and large federally assisted research facilities such as the National Research Council contributed to an eventual technology boom. The early companies led to the establishment of newer firms such as Newbridge Networks, Mitel and Corel.
In 1991, provincial and federal governments responded to a land claim submitted by the Algonquins of Ontario regarding the unceded status of the land on which Ottawa is situated. Negotiations have been ongoing, with an eventual goal to sign a treaty that would release Canada from claims for misuse of land under Algonquin title, affirm rights of the Algonquins, and negotiate conditions of the title transfer, with an agreement in principle arranged in 2016.
21st Century[edit]
Ottawa's city limits have expanded over time, including a large expansion effective 1 January 2001, when the province of Ontario amalgamated all the constituent municipalities of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa–Carleton into a single city. Regional Chair Bob Chiarelli was elected as the new city's first mayor in the 2000 municipal election, defeating Gloucester mayor Claudette Cain. On 15 October 2001, a diesel-powered light rail transit (LRT) line was introduced on an experimental basis. Known today as O-Train Line 2, it was initially dubbed simply "the O-Train", and it connected downtown Ottawa to the southern suburbs via Carleton University. The decision to extend the O-Train and to replace it with an electric light rail system was a major issue in the 2006 municipal elections, where Chiarelli was defeated by businessman Larry O'Brien. After O'Brien's election, transit plans were changed to establish a series of light rail stations from the east side of the city into downtown and for using a tunnel through the downtown core.
In October 2012, the City Council approved the final Lansdowne Park plan, an agreement with the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group that saw a new stadium, increased green space and housing and retail added to the site. In December 2012, City Council voted unanimously to move forward with the Confederation Line, a 12.5 km (7.8 mi) light rail transit line, which was opened on 14 September 2019.
In 2020, the city saw a major change in the nature of work due to civil servants without necessary on-site functions moving to online work as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with many government workers shifting to online work. This arrangement continued until the gradual return to in-person work beginning in 2022, when federal workers returned to two mandatory days in-office per week.
In 2022, a movement protesting COVID-19 restrictions drew large numbers of Canadians, including those from outside Ottawa. This led to the occupation of Wellington Street in Canada's parliamentary precinct. The movement was associated with the trucking social identity and was preceded by a "Convoy to Ottawa" phase. The occupation began on 29 January and lasted approximately three and a half weeks, ending after the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act on 14 February and pursued enforcement action against the protesters, such as debanking of over 250 protestor bank accounts and later carrying out arrests on 19 February.
