page_title: History of Ottawa
section_title: Expansion into a major Canadian city
hierarchical_section_title: History of Ottawa / City of Ottawa / Expansion into a major Canadian city
context_page_description: The history of Ottawa, capital of Canada, was shaped by events such as the construction of the Rideau Canal, the lumber industry, the choice of Ottawa as the location of Canada's capital, as well as American and European influences and interactions. By 1914, Ottawa's population had surpassed 100,000 and today it is the capital of a G7 country whose metropolitan population exceeds one million.
  The origin of the name "Ottawa" is derived from the Algonquin word adawe, meaning "to trade". The word refers to the indigenous peoples who used the river to trade, hunt, fish, camp, harvest plants, ceremonies, and for other traditional uses. The first maps made of the area started to name the major river after these peoples.
  For centuries, Algonquin people have portaged through the waterways of both the Ottawa River and the Rideau River while passing through the area. French explorer Étienne Brûlé was credited as the first European to see the Chaudière Falls in 1610, and he too had to portage past them to get further inland. No permanent settlement occurred in the area until 1800 when Philemon Wright founded his village near the falls, on the north shore of the Ottawa River.
context_section_description: A vast public transportation network was started when Thomas Ahearn founded the Ottawa Electric Railway Company in 1893, replacing a horsecar system which began in 1870.  This private enterprise eventually provided heated streetcar service covering areas such as Brittania, Westboro, The Glebe, Rockcliffe Park and Old Ottawa South.
  Ottawa became part the transcontinental rail network on June 28, 1886, when Pacific Express connected it to Hull, Quebec (now Gatineau) and then onto Lachute, Quebec via the Prince of Wales Bridge.
  For years, Ottawa was crisscrossed by the railways of several companies which had stations such as the Bytown and Prescott Railway in New Edinburgh, Broad Street in Lebreton Flats, and two others.  A downtown central station was first created in 1895 through John Rudolphus Booth's Canada Atlantic Railway. The site was later used for Union Station, which opened in June 1912 to little fanfare, since Grand Trunk Railway general manager Charles Hays perished in the Titanic disaster two months previously.  Though removed in 1966, the tracks had led along the east side of the canal towards downtown to Union Station, then alongside Chateau Laurier running to the Alexandra (Interprovincial) Bridge.
  The Hull-Ottawa fire of 1900 destroyed two thirds of Hull, including 40 per cent of its residential buildings and most of its largest employers along the waterfront.  The fire also spread across the Ottawa River and destroyed about one fifth of Ottawa from the Lebreton Flats south to Booth Street and  down to Dow's Lake.
  The Centre Block of the Parliament buildings were destroyed by fire on February 3, 1916. The House of Commons and Senate were temporarily relocated to the recently constructed Victoria Memorial Museum, now the Canadian Museum of Nature. A new Centre Block was completed in 1922, the centrepiece of which is a dominant Gothic revival-styled structure known as the Peace Tower located on Wellington Street.
  Confederation Square was created in the late 1930s, and Canada's National War Memorial was erected.  It used lands that once contained the prestigious Russell House hotel, the Russell Theatre, and old City Hall, all which succumbed to fire, and the old post office and Knox Presbyterian Church were demolished.  A new Central Post Office was erected facing the memorial.
  Ottawa's industrial appearance was vastly changed due to the 1940s Greber Plan.  Later powers were given by an act of Parliament to the newly formed National Capital Commission (NCC) to attain ownership of lands, and effect vast changes.  Some of the results of these were the National Capital Greenbelt, expropriation of areas in downtown, the removal of large industrial areas, the removal of downtown railway tracks, the relocation of the train station out of downtown, and the creation and maintenance of areas that would provide the nation's capital with a more attractive appearance.
  Collaboration between the city and NCC's predecessor, the Federal District Commission also led to major water and sewer projects, the construction of the Queensway which had been the old GTR/CNR right of way, several bridges, expansion of Carling Avenue, and the offer of F.D.C. land at Green Island (near Rideau Falls) to create city hall, opened in 1958.  Until then, the city had been without a permanent building for around 17 years.  It was in use until 2000, when Ottawa City Hall occupied the former headquarters of the municipality.
  In the 1960s and 1970s, a building boom vastly changed Ottawa's skyline. 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 adopters led to offshoot companies such as Newbridge Networks, Mitel and Corel.  Other large companies specializing in computer software and electronics infrastructures formed about this time, but by 2001, huge losses started being incurred.  The industr
caption: Annexation history of Ottawa to 2001.
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