In May I travelled from New York City to Ottawa for the annual Tulip Festival, and to my delight I found that Ottawa itself was a garden of delights.
The Tulip Festival had its origins with a gift of 100,000 bulbs presented in gratitude to the people of Canada by the Dutch Royal Family after World War II. Due to the war, some members of the Royal Family sought refuge in Ottawa. During their stay Princess Margriet was born and she periodically returns, often at Tulip Festival time.
The gift of tulips from the Dutch people to Ottawa has continued over the years, and every spring more than a million blossoms of various colours stretch across a nine-mile radius that winds along the Rideau Canal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
While Ottawa is primarily English speaking, I found that most signs, directions, instructions, menus, monuments and so on were written in both English and French and that many locals were bi-lingual and could converse fluently in either language.
This charming mix-and-match blend of cultures is not limited to language; architecturally too, the city captures the best of both traditions and makes Ottawa a truly distinctive city to visit.
As the capital of Canada, Ottawa is home to the magnificent grouping of Gothic Revival Parliament Buildings situated on Parliament Hill. During summer months there’s a daily changing of the guard ceremony, which adds even more English-style colour and texture to the downtown.
Rideau Canal
Ottawa is a sprawling collection of neighbourhoods linked by greenways and walkways fronting the Rideau Canal, which cleaves the city in two.
The canal was built by Lieutenant Colonel John By of the British Royal Engineers between 1826 and 1832 to link Kingston and Ottawa. By was sent from England to undertake the extraordinary engineering feat connecting the chain of lakes between Lake Ontario in Kingston and the Ottawa River in Ottawa. The canal has a series of 47 locks at 24 lock stations, which are all accessible by road.
Although the canal was commissioned—in reaction to the War of 1812—to provide safe and efficient access between the two cities during times of war, thankfully it was never needed for that purpose. Today, it is the lifeblood of the city with its 112 miles of recreational pathways for walking, biking, roller skating, and jogging.
In summer the canal is used for water activities and in the winter it becomes the longest skate-way in the world, with 7.8 km (4.8 miles) of skating surface.
Château Laurier, ByWard Market
My introduction to Ottawa began with afternoon tea at the elegant Fairmont Château Laurier, a classic tribute to French Gothic architecture constructed in 1912.
Positioned just east of Parliament Hill, the hotel was built to accommodate travellers arriving by rail on the British-financed Grand Trunk Railroad system. General manager Charles Melville Hays envisioned creating a series of grand hotels and railway stations located at key points along the transcontinental route to the Pacific.
No expense was spared in building the flagship hotel, but alas, Hays never lived to oversee the opening as he perished returning to Canada on the R.M.S. Titanic just days before the hotel’s inauguration.
Across the street from the Château Laurier, along Sussex Drive, is the picturesque ByWard Market, an indoor/outdoor farmers market. Here you can wander through cobblestone courtyards leading to restaurants, clubs, bistros, boutique shops, handicraft stalls, and fruit and flower vendors. You can also find the famous BeaverTails pastry, a home-grown, whole wheat treat that has locals and visitors alike lining up for one of the dozens of versions made to order onsite.
Museums and Galleries
And while Ottawa can more than hold its own culinary achievements against the other renowned havens of Canada’s gastronomic scene, culturally they are in a class by themselves.
The city has a plethora of world-class museums, and with a “Canada’s Capital Museums Passport” you can visit up to seven of them. They include the Bytown Museum, which uncovers tales of passion and scandal about the people who built Ottawa; the Canadian War Museum covering military history; the Royal Canadian Mint where you can hold a bar of pure gold in your hands; the National Gallery of Canada which houses the largest art collection in the country; and the Canada Science and Technology Museum with its interactive hands-on exhibits.
Many of the museums are housed in architecturally distinctive buildings, but none more so than the Canadian Museum of Nature. But for me the most spectacular was the Canadian Museum of Civilization, which explores over 1,000 years of pre-history through aboriginal village life to the world’s largest indoor collection of totally awesome totem poles and life-sized interactive townscapes.
There’s a Children’s Museum, a Postal Museum, and an IMAX theatre onsite, not to mention marvellous views of Parliament Hill and the canal from the outside plaza.
For information, contact the Ottawa Tourist Board: www.ottawatourism.ca
Barbara Angelakis is a seasoned international traveller and award-winning writer based in the New York City area. To read more of her articles and adventures visit LuxuryWeb Magazine at www.luxuryweb.com
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