Originally an Algonquin settlement, Ottawa (pop. 775,000) was a small fur-trading and lumber-milling outpost until the 1850s, when Queen Victoria chose the city to be the national capital, a compromise answer to the bitter rivalry between Montreal and Toronto. Construction of the Parliament buildings began the following year, but government only became the largest employer after World War II, when the lumber mills began to decline. Today the train tracks and factories have been replaced by telecom and computer companies, and the miles of parks and greenbelts make Ottawa one of the most peaceable and pleasant of the world’s capitals.
Orientation within Ottawa is easy: Parliament Hill, which holds the most prominent buildings, is on the north edge of town, with its back turned on the Ottawa River and the French-speaking province of Quebec. Getting around is easy, since most of the sights are gathered together around Parliament Hill and the adjacent Byward Market. To see Ottawa, you should definitely park the car, get out, and walk (or bike, or rollerblade . . .) around town.
Parliament Hill is home to the three buildings that comprise Parliament, Canada’s seat of federal government. The architecture is reminiscent of England’s Houses of Parliament as redesigned by the cartoonist Charles Addams: Elegant, Gothic-style carved stone walls rise to copper mansard roofs topped with fantastically filigreed wrought iron. On the lawns of the Parliament buildings, the Changing of the Guard ceremony (daily at 10 am, late June–late Aug.; free) is extremely popular with tourists, as is the firing of the Noonday Gun (daily at noon, May–Aug.), which you can watch from the bluffs above the Ottawa River.
East of Parliament Hill stands the National Gallery of Canada (daily May–Oct., Wed.–Sun. Oct.–April; free), at 380 Sussex Drive. Along with many floors of painting and sculpture from colonial times up to the present, including George Segal’s automobilia assembly The Gas Station, there’s also a large collection of Asian and Inuit art. Another striking piece of modern architecture stands upstream, just west of Parliament Hill: the new riverfront Canadian War Museum (daily; $C10), which documents Canadian soldiers’ bravery in war- and peace-making.
