First Day in Ottawa

The weather is chilly, -8 degrees, there's been a 56 day transit strike, and up on Parliament Hill the Tories are dealing with a nationwide recession.

Click the voicethread slideshow to see photos with commentary on my first day in Ottawa just before the Teachers Institute on Parliamentary Democracy, which was to have happened in November, but was postponed due to the election til now.

First, a bit of history: Ottawa is situated at the confluence of two rivers, the Ottawa and the Rideau. Its geographic location has shaped the city from its earliest days.

Founded as logging towns, Ottawa (originally known and Bytown), and its twin city, Hull (originally known as Wrightstown), were once among the roughest towns in the New World.


In the early 1800s, most of the population was concentrated in Wrightstown, on the other side of the Ottawa River. In 1826, Colonel John By arrived on the scene with orders to link up the Ottawa River with Lake Ontario. The result was the Rideau Canal, (now known as the "longest skating rink" in the world!), and a new village called Bytown, which, thanks to the canal, soon became a bustling boom town.

In 1855, Bytown was officially renamed Ottawa. Five years later Queen Victoria selected the city as the capital of the newly-founded Dominion of Canada.