Early history The area that would become the National Capital Region was first settled 6,500 years ago by
Algonquins, who hunted, foraged, and traded in the area through the European exploration and colonization period. The area remained relatively untouched until 1800, when
Wright's Town was established as the first permanent colonial settlement in the
Ottawa Valley on what is now the
Quebec side of the
Ottawa River. At this time and for nearly a century, the principal economic engine of Wright's Town was the
Ottawa River timber trade, which saw trees felled in northern Ontario and western Quebec pushed down the Ottawa River and on towards
Quebec City for shipment to the
United Kingdom and
United States. After the
War of 1812, amid U.S. threats to the
St. Lawrence River, the British military undertook the
Rideau Canal as an alternative, more defensible shipping route, which led to significant growth and land speculation in the area surrounding Wright's Town. In 1827, the settlement on the south side of the river was named Bytown in honour of British military engineer Colonel
John By, who was responsible for the entire Rideau Waterway construction project. After the Canal's completion in 1832, Bytown reached a population of 1,000 and was incorporated as a city. Across the river, Wright's Town was incorporated as
Hull in 1875 and the historic 1800 settlement was
destroyed by fire in 1900.
Emergence as the National Capital Region The selection of Ottawa as the national capital of Canada predates Confederation and was highly contested, requiring more than 200 votes in the parliament of the
United Province of Canada and provoking the
Stony Monday Riot over local objections to the selection. Tensions between Anglophone
Upper Canada and Francophone
Lower Canada, difficulties in finding a logistically affordable and feasible capital location, and legislative stalemates all contributed to significant delays in choosing a permanent capital for the United Province of Canada. Although Bytown had been considered as early as 1849, nearly 10 years after the formation of the United Province of Canada, the final decision to establish the city as Canada's capital did not occur until 1857 (by which point it had been renamed to Ottawa). This selection was made by
Queen Victoria on the advice of the Governor General of United Canada,
Edmund Walker Head, and the choice was ratified by Parliament in 1859. Construction on the parliament buildings began that December and represented the largest construction project undertaken in North America at the time. The precinct was still incomplete when the United Province of Canada,
Nova Scotia, and
New Brunswick united to form Canada in 1867.
Parliament Hill, as the site is now known, was not completed in full until 1876. Following the
introduction of prohibition laws in Ontario in 1916, Hull became a popular spot for politicians and Ottawa residents to access alcohol legally. Although prohibition in Ontario ended in 1927, Hull's downtown continued to serve as the main entertainment district for the capital region. Hull's night life scene peaked in the mid-20th century, when upscale nightclubs landed performers such as
Louis Armstrong and
Tony Bennett and the Viva Disco club was named one of
Playboy magazine's top ten disco clubs in North America. By the 1980s, however, Hull topped the list of Quebec municipalities for its high crime rate,
21st century In 2022, truckers protesting
COVID-19 vaccination requirements for cross-border truckers began a
convoy protest that ultimately converged in downtown Ottawa on January 29, 2022.
Although not the first attempt to organize a protest to the national capital, the 2022 convoy was successful both in arriving in Ottawa and in staying in the downtown core, blocking major streets with trucks and heavy machinery for nearly a month. The protests also underscored challenges with the National Capital Region's complicated governance structure, as the federal government was forced to rely on the municipal
Ottawa Police Service and support from the provincial government to clear the blockade. In 2024, in an effort to combat stereotypes that Ottawa and the National Capital Region were "the city that fun forgot" and a "sleepy government town," the City of Ottawa hired a night-life commissioner tasked with supporting restaurants, clubs, and other businesses in the night-life sector by shepherding regulatory reform and providing constituency services to businesses navigating the municipal bureaucracy. == Geography ==