Early history 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 were 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.
European exploration and early development 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, which was named
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 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. , 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 labour unrest during the
Shiners' War from 1835 to 1845. 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. 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 The selection of Ottawa as a capital city predates the
confederation of Canada. The choice was contentious and not straightforward, 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. 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 the then-named Bytown, but that option proved less popular than Toronto or Montreal. In 1843, a report of the Executive Council recommended Montreal as the capital as 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 permanent location. Kingston and Bytown were again considered potential capitals. However, the winning proposal was for two cities to share capital status and the legislature to alternate sitting in each: 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. . Two years prior,
Queen Victoria selected the city as the permanent capital of the
Province of Canada. Ottawa was chosen as the capital for two primary reasons: first, 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. Second, Ottawa was on the border between
Canada West and
Canada East, making the selection an important political compromise. Other minor considerations also favoured Ottawa. 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 to
Prescott on the
Saint Lawrence River and beyond.
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.
Post-Confederation after the
1900 Hull–Ottawa fire. The fire destroyed one-fifth of Ottawa and two-thirds of neighbouring
Hull,
Quebec. In 1889, the Government developed and distributed 60 "water leases" to mainly local industrialists which gave them permission to generate electricity and operate 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. The
Hull–Ottawa fire of 1900 destroyed two-thirds of Hull, including major lumber employers and main street buildings. It began as a chimney fire in Hull on the north side of the river, but due to wind, spread rapidly throughout the widespread wooden buildings. In Ottawa, it destroyed about one-fifth of the buildings from the Lebreton Flats south to Booth Street and down to
Dow's Lake. 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. The fire destroyed approximately 3200 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. 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 was 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 area downtown 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.
Post–Second World War |thumb surrounding the urban core|thumb 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. 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 actioned, such as a city hall on the east side of the canal, the plan's open space recommendations did lead to the creation 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 main train station for the city. 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. From 1931 to 1958, City Hall had been at the
Transportation Building adjacent to Union Station (now part of the
Rideau Centre). 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. 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 1990s and 2000s. 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 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. 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 dubbed the O-Train and connected
downtown Ottawa to the southern suburbs via
Carleton University. 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 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, and leading to the
occupation of
Wellington Street in Canada's parliamentary precinct. The movement had associations 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. ==Geography==