February 12, 2006
Hello from Ottawa - First Impressions and
an Overview
My partner in crime Theresa and I went to Ottawa 3 or 4 years ago
in the winter to catch Ottawa's famous winter festival "Winterlude".
Unfortunately that year the weather was too warm and the weekend
was a total wash-out. Even the ice sculptures had melted.
Well, it was time to give it a second shot. So this past Friday
we got in the car and once we drove through a few snow squalls past
Oshawa it was smooth sailing all the way to Canada's capital. We
got into town right around 4:30 pm, just before sunset.
Coming in on the 417 into town we caught a bit of Ottawa's rush
hour, and traffic along Wellington Street was bumper to bumper.
Funny, I had always figured that Ottawa didn’t have a rush
hour, boy was I wrong. Just because some people may think that Ottawa is a bit of a bureaucratic backwater doesn’t mean it’s
not a hustling and bustling place.
So I have since done some research about this capital of ours and
have found out some interesting facts that demonstrate that Ottawa
is a much more interesting city than expected:
- Ottawa is the fourth largest urban centre in Canada (behind
Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver), with a population of more than
1.2 million people.
- Ottawa naturally is the home of government organizations such
as the Government of Canada, Canada's Parliament, the Senate,
and the Supreme Court of Canada
- Ottawa is a centre of high technology and home to technology
giants such as Nortel Networks, JDS Uniphase, Cognos, Cisco and
Alcatel.
- Other major companies like MBNC Canada, ING Direct and Clarica
also make Ottawa their home.
- More than 65,000 people are employed in 1500 companies in the
high-tech sector.
- Apparently Ottawa has the best-educated workforce in Canada.
On a per capita level it has more engineers, scientists and PhDs
than any other city in the country.
- Ottawa is one of the top 5 sites in the world for R&D.
- More than 7 million visitors come to Ottawa every year, and
collectively they spend more than $1.3 billion.
- A Swiss-based management firm, Corporate Resources Group, ranked
Ottawa sixth in the world for quality of life.
- Ottawa is a truly bilingual city and it also has significant
number of people who speak Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese
and Arabic
So this little bit of research taught me that there is much more
to Ottawa than what we commonly know. It's pretty evident that Ottawa
has undergone huge changes since the early part of the 1800s when
Colonel By came to build the Rideau Canal from 1826 to 1832. This
initial settlement was called Bytown and in 1855 Bytown officially
changed its name to Ottawa.
The city really grew around the canal and today, the Rideau Canal
is one of the major centers in Ottawa for recreation, and comes
alive in the winter as the Rideau Canal Skateway. Ottawa's first
industry was derived from logging which grew around the Ottawa River.
Rafts of timber were floated down the Ottawa River, and large sawmills
were built during the 19th century.
Right from the start the ByWard
Market became a major centre of action for the lumberjacks,
and even today it has remained one of Ottawa's primary entertainment
and commercial areas.
Ottawa's first electric streetcar service was opened in 1891 and
a local pioneer, Thomas Ahearn, often referred to as Canada's Edison,
was a driving force behind bringing electricity to Ottawa. He invented
heating appliances and one menu of the day (in 1892) boasts that
this was the first instance in history that an entire meal was cooked
by electricity.
In 1877, the public got its first demonstration of the telephone.
And Canada's first country-wide broadcast came through the radio
waves from Ottawa in 1927. Tragedy struck Ottawa several times:
in 1900, a huge fire destroyed entire neighbourhoods, and in 1916,
the Parliament Buildings suffered the same fate.
Ottawa is a major tourist destination, and visitors to the city
enjoy the cultural and heritage attractions, as well as Ottawa's
festivals and special events.
Quite surprisingly, Ottawa has a number of world-renowned celebrities,
including Paul Anka, Lorne Green, Margaret Atwood, Alanis Morrisette
and Matthew Perry. So the history and make-up of Ottawa is indeed
much more interesting and diverse than expected.
One of the great things about Ottawa is its unique heritage architecture.
Being the passionate photographer that I am I requested Theresa
to stop the car in various treacherous positions in the middle of
rush hour traffic, just to hop out and take some pictures in the
warm evening light. The temperature itself was anything else but
warm, it must have been -10, -12 degrees Celsius.
I got out of the car near the Supreme Court of Canada and got out
to shoot a few photos in the setting afternoon soon. My breath was
freezing and walking around without a toque or gloves was not a
good idea in this -10 degree weather. I definitely had to cover
my trigger fingers on the camera with gloves since the biting cold
was chewing at my digits.
Of course I wanted to catch a close-up of the Parliament Buildings
as well, so we grabbed an illegal parking spot and I hopped out
of the car and instructed Theresa to circle around the block in
the event someone was going to shoo her away.
Then it was on to our next stop, the historic
Lord Elgin Hotel, located right downtown, 5 minutes from the
Parliament Buildings, right across from Confederation Park and the
famous Rideau Canal, our destination on Saturday for some outdoor
skating on the Canal, at 7.8 km the world’s largest skatingrink.
Related Articles:
Hello from Ottawa
- My 2-day packed itinerary for Winterlude
Hello from Ottawa - First
impressions and an overview
Hello from Ottawa - The Lord Elgin
Hotel: a historic landmark in the heart of Ottawa
Hello from Ottawa - Fat Tuesday's
and the Mardi Gras Experience in the ByWard Market
Hello from Ottawa - An early
morning walk to Parliament Hill
Hello from Ottawa - Skating
on the Rideau Canal, the World's Largest Skating Rink
Hello from Ottawa - Charity and
hilarity: the 26th Annual Bedzz Races on Dow's Lake
Hello from Ottawa - Confederation
Park and other Winterlude locations
Hello from Ottawa - Darcy McGee's:
a historic Irish pub on Sparks Street
Hello from Ottawa - The Canadian
War Museum and "Weapons of Mass Dissemination - The Propaganda
of War"
Hello from Ottawa - The
Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography featuring Sunil Gupta
and the challenges of immigration
An interview with Tourism Ottawa
provides a great overview of this city
An interview about
the ByWard Market, a prime entertainment and shopping area
An interview
with the National Gallery of Canada
An interview
with the Canadian Museum of Civilization
Helpful websites:
Ottawa
Tourism: Ottawa's official tourism information
The ByWard
Market Business Improvement Area
The
National Capital Commission
The National
Museum of Civilization
The National Gallery
of Canada
The Canadian War
Museum
Useful books about Ottawa:
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