Ottawa

Ottawa was a rough lumber town when, on New Year’s Eve 1857, it was chosen by Queen Victoria to be the capital of Canada. It grew haphazardly and by the 1890s the Canadian government was struggling to articulate an architectural style that was distinct from American and older British models for their “Washington of the North”. In 1899 Prime Minister Laurier’s government established the federal-local Ottawa Improvement Commission and for the next half-century a succession of planners, visionaries and government leaders guided improvements. Today’s Capital is a magnificent, accessible city with the most picturesque skyline I’ve ever seen.

Andrew’s laptop had become increasingly problematic so we decided to swing by Ottawa to get a new one. Accommodation was damn expensive so we stayed in a self-contained ‘apartment’ in a backpackers’, which was still pretty exy for what it was but fabulously located.

While Andrew caught-up on work, Reub and I went for a walk to get beers then Matilda and I went for a walk to get Korean-Japanese take-out for dinner. I managed to convince Matilda to go walking with me again after dinner, it was a beautiful, balmy night.

We walked through the ByWard Market area in Lower Town, the cultural hub of Ottawa, it’s French origins still very present; through Major’s Hill Park; past Chateau Laurier; to the Ottawa Locks of the Rideau Canal; back through Major’s Hill Park along the Ottawa River; past the Tavern on the Hill and the National Gallery of Canada to the Alexandra Bridge and back home.

The Rideau Canal is a chain of lakes, rivers and locks that winds its way 202 kms to the shores of Lake Ontario. Building began in 1826 and the Ottawa locks, a series of eight locks that together have a lift of 24 m, are still operated by hand as they were when they opened in 1832. It is the oldest continuously operated canal system in North America, and in 2007 it was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Next day Heidi and I went walking again while Andrew returned to his computer man. We checked out the foyer of Chateau Laurier; watched the changing of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, National War Memorial*; waved to Justin Trudeau in his office, passed Parliament Hill, Confederation Building, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Library of Canada before crossing over the Portage Bridge to the Québecois city of Gatineau that makes up part of the Capital Region.

Le Chateau Laurier was designed by the architectural firm Ross and MacFarlane and was built between 1908 and 1912. It was the first in a chain of chateau-style hotels constructed by the Grand Trunk Railway (later incorporated into Canadian National Railways) to encourage tourists to travel along its routes. Distinguished by its crisp facades and steep copper roofs, the hotel’s picturesque appearance captures the romance of traveling by train. The chateauesque rooflines of several federal government buildings in Ottawa were inspired by the commanding presence of this hotel.

Canada’s first grand railway hotel was the Windsor Hotel in Montréal that opened in 1878. Canadian Pacific Railway opened Hotel Vancouver (two more railway-owned hotels by that name were built in Vancouver), Banff Springs Hotel, Château Frontenac in Québec City, Place Viger in Montréal, the Empress in Victoria, Chateau Lake Louise, the Palliser Hotel in Calgary, the Royal York in Toronto and the Royal Alexandra Hotel in Winnipeg (now demolished). Not to be outdone, the Grand Trunk Railway built Le Chateau Laurier in Ottawa, the Fort Garry Hotel in Winnipeg, Jasper Park Lodge, the Highland Inn in Algonquin Park, and the Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton. The Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montréal, built in 1958, was perhaps the last true railway hotel built in Canada. If we had money to burn, or if we leave the kids at home next time, we could travel across Canada by rail and stay exclusively in these hotels..

We caught up with Andrew, Matilda and Reuben; visited the Canadian Museum of History, stayed too long (but not long enough) and got a parking fine; then headed ‘home’ to Trois Rivieres. The Canadian Museum of History is a fabulous building, perfect for a museum, designed by Douglas Cardinal, a famous Aboriginal architect. The rest of this post is about the French colonisation of the Americas, specifically eastern North America, so turn off now if you’re not interested.

Canada’s First Peoples have been in the country for at least 12,000 years. They had had many well-established trading patterns and trade alliances throughout North America. Then one thousand years ago, shortly after founding colonies in Greenland, the Norse seafarers (Vikings) sailed to Atlantic Canada but their encounters with the Indigenous peoples was not always peaceful and this Aboriginal resistance to the Norse was a key factor in their failure to establish a permanent presence in North America. Then Inuit ancestors, the Thule, left their northwest Alaskan homeland and moved into Arctic Canada about 800 years ago, spreading rapidly across the region.

New France was the area colonised by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris.

At its peak in 1712 (before the Treaty of Utrecht), the territory of New France consisted of five colonies, each with its own administration, that extended from Newfoundland to the Canadian prairies and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, including all the Great Lakes of North America, as follows:

Canada – districts of Québec, Trois-Rivières and Montréal, which then extended south through the Midwestern United States along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers in what is now the U.S. states of Illinois and Missouri, with outposts in Indiana).
Hudson’s Bay.
Acadie – parts of Québec, the Maritimes (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island), modern-day Maine to the Kennebec River.
Plaisance – on the island of Newfoundland.
Louisiane – a.k.a. French Louisianna, it covered most of the drainage basin of the Mississippi River and stretched from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rocky Mountains.

Although French exploration of the Americas began in the 16^th century, New France evolved from a fur-trade outpost and the French developed generally good relationships with the indigenous people but by the 1600s the long-established Indigenous trade routes had allowed European goods and diseases to travel much further inland than the traders who brought them. As they established, French settlers became Canadiens and Acadiens.

1534, Francis I of France sent Jacques Cartier on the first of three voyages to explore the coast of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence River.
Jacques Cartier planted a cross on the shore of the Gaspé Peninsula.
French attempts to establish several colonies throughout North America fail due to due to weather, disease, or conflict with other European powers.
- 1541 Cartier attempted to create the first permanent European settlement in North America at Cap-Rouge (Québec City) with 400 settlers but the settlement was abandoned the next year. It was only through the help of the First People that any of them survived the bad weather, scurvy and malnutrition but this didn’t stop Cartier from abducting indigenous persons and taking them back to France.
1608 Samuel de Champlain founded Québec and explored the Great Lakes.
1713 The Treaty of Utrecht resulted in France relinquishing its claims to mainland Acadia, the Hudson Bay and Newfoundland to Great Britain.
1713 France established the colony of Île Royale, now called Cape Breton Island.
1714 about 2,500 French settlers called Acadia home.
1754-1763 The Seven Years’ War, a global conflict that involved every European great power of the time and spanned five continents. The conflict split Europe into two coalitions: one was led by the Kingdom of Great Britain while the other was led by the Kingdom of France.
1754-1763 The French and Indian War (considered by some as the North American play-out of the Seven Years’ War, but deemed by others as a war in its own right, with its own distinct issues) pitted the colonies of British America against those of New France, each side supported by military units from the parent country and by American Indian allies. Indigenous forces did much of the fighting. Although the French and allied forces in North America won several early battles, by the summer of 1759 British ships and soldiers had besieged Québec City. On 13 September they defeated the French at the Plains of Abraham on the banks of the St Lawrence River (Fleuve St Laurent), Québec City, and New France was in British hands.
1755-1764 The Great Expulsion, the forced removal by the British of the Acadian people from the Maritime provinces. Despite Acadia remaining neutral during the French and Indian War, Britain wanted it for its fisheries and strategic position, which put the Acadians and Mi’kmaq in a very difficult position.
1763 France ceded the rest of New France, except the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, to Great Britain and Spain at the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years’ War. Britain received Canada, Acadia, and the parts of French Louisiana which lay east of the Mississippi River – except for the Île d’Orléans (New Orleans), which was granted to Spain, along with the territory to the west – the larger portion of Louisiana.
Between 1600 and 1750, France and Britain were at war five times with countless small skirmishes in between. Northeastern North America was one battleground in this global conflict.
The new British rulers, First Peoples and former French subjects had to adjust to new geopolitical realities. They achieved a level of uneasy accommodation that has endured up to the present.
The Huron-Wendat Nation didn’t surrender to the British but instead formed a new alliance allowing them to enter the era of British rule as independent allies.
1763 Pontiac’s War was launched by a loose confederation of elements of Native American tribes, primarily from the Great Lakes region, the Illinois Country, and Ohio Country. The Anishinabe and other nations who were dissatisfied with British postwar policies in the Great Lakes region expelled British garrisons from most of the territory.
1763 First Peoples established new relationships with the British Crown, embodied in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, a first step towards Crown recognition of Aboriginal Title.
1764 First Peoples met with the British at Fort Niagara where they negotiated a new alliance embodied in the Covenant Chain, the Royal Proclamation and the Treaty of Niagara.
1765 the population of the new Province of Québec reached approximately 70,000 settlers.
1765-1783 Many First Peoples supported the British Crown during the American Revolutionary War in the hope it would secure their territories against American encroachment, however at the end of the war First Peoples were excluded from the peace negotiations that gave the new United States control over their homelands.
1800 Spain returned its portion of Louisiana to France under the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso. However, French leader Napoleon Bonaparte in turn sold it to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, permanently ending French colonial efforts on the North American mainland.
1812 The United Sates declared war on Great Britain in 1812 and launched a series of invasions of Canada. First Peoples joined British and colonial forces in defending British North America, After the war, when the American threat declined, the importance of First Peoples as allies was reduced and colonial governments moved more aggressively to acquire First Peoples’ lands.
1776-1840 the non-Indigenous population of British North America increased from under 100,00 to over 1 million.

The province of Québec is the successor to the French colony of Canada.

Canada is officially bilingual, with both French and English having equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the Parliament and Government of Canada. At the provincial level, New Brunswick officially recognizes the equal status of French and English. While French has equal legal status in Manitoba restored due to a court ruling that struck down seventy-year-old English-only laws in 1985, in practice, French language services are only provided in some regions of the province. Québec has declared itself officially unilingual (French only). Alberta and Saskatchewan are also considered unilingual (English only). In addition, Inuktitut is also an official language in Nunavut, and nine aboriginal languages have official status in the Northwest Territories.

Francophone Quebecers will often use terms like Nouvelle-France, Canadien, Canadien-Français or Québécois. For them, preserving their distinctiveness from English Canada has been historically important, particularly since the rise of contemporary Québec nationalism that grew from the Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille). This was a period during the 1960s of intense socio-political and socio-cultural change in Québec, characterised by the effective secularisation of government, the creation of a state-run welfare state, and realignment of politics into federalist and sovereigntist (or separatist) factions and the eventual election of a pro-sovereignty provincial government, the Parti Québécois, led by René Lévesque, in the 1976 election.

Descendants of Canadiens now living outside of Québec are often referred to by reference to their current province of residence, such as Franco-Ontarian. Francophone populations in the Maritime provinces (apart from northwestern New Brunswick) are more likely to be descended from the settlers of the French colony of Acadia, and therefore still call themselves Acadians.

Small pockets of French-speaking communities in the U.S.A. include:

Louisiana French, spoken in Louisiana by descendants of colonists in French Louisiana
New England French, spoken in New England by descendants of 19th and 20th-century Canadian migrants
Missouri French, spoken in Missouri by descendants of French settlers in the Illinois Country
Muskrat French, spoken in Michigan by descendants of habitants, voyageurs and coureurs des bois in the Pays d’en Haut
Métis French, spoken in North Dakota by Métis people

* At the request of the Royal Canadian Legion, the Canadian Government became part of a project to create a tomb of an unknown soldier at the war memorial. It was added in 2000 and holds the remains of an unidentified Canadian soldier who died in France during World War I. The tomb is intended to honour the approximately 116,000 Canadians who died in combat, as well as all members of the Canadian Armed Forces—in all branches—who died or may die in all conflicts, past, present, and future.

The Royal Canadian Legion leadership opined that the tomb deserved a military or police guard as a symbol of respect and to protect it from vandalism and desecration. Since 2007, a pair of sentries from the Ceremonial Guard, in full dress uniform and with unloaded weapons, have been stationed at the tomb, on rotation from 9 am to 5 pm. On October 22, 2014, a gunman armed with a rifle shot at the sentries on duty at the tomb, fatally wounding one before proceeding across the street and into the Centre Block on nearby Parliament Hill where he was killed.