If you were to ask a random person what the capital of Canada is (maybe in an Instagram story quiz), there’s a non-zero
chance they would answer Toronto, after all it is the country’s largest and arguably
most influential city, and while people have likely also heard of cities like Montreal
and Vancouver, the actual capital of Canada is the smaller but still sizeable Ontarian
city of Ottawa, so why is Ottawa the capital of Canada?
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For those of you who haven’t seen a JJ McCullough video, there is one thing that is very important
to know about Canada; although it might be quite small, it is-- and for the longest time
very much was-- divided among two groups, that’s because Canada was first colonized
by two different European powers. Around the turn of the 17th century, England and France
started to set up colonies in North America. While England (and later Britain) mainly set
up colonies along the mid-Atlantic coast-- creating settlements like Boston, New York,
and Philadelphia-- the French primarily explored down the St. Lawrence River and ventured much
further inland, settling Montreal and Québec City, and even down the plains, propped up
by the ever so lucrative fur trade, to St. Louis and Nouvelle-Orleans… Nouv… New
Orleans. Over the following decades, while Britain gained control over the Hudson Bay,
France also continued to expand its colonies even further.
The colonies in the New World would also occasionally fight each-other depending on what was going
on back in Europe. Thus, when the Seven Years War broke out from 1756-1763 the French colony
was conquered and absorbed by British America. The French and Indian War, as it is also known,
had a lot of effects on the two powers, notably in France-- which pretty much just exploded--
and the 13 colonies, who fought for and declared their independence to create the United States
of America. The colonies to the north however stayed with the British, indeed becoming home
to many a Regular sympathizer. The Revolutionaries also tried to invade Québec in 1775, but
that didn’t exactly work out. Fast forward ¾ of a century and the Canadian
colonies had a bit of a tough time determining where they really wanted their capital to
be. Canada East and Canada West were united into the Province of Canada in 1841, but the
capital bounced around Kingston, Montreal, Toronto, and Québec City basically every
time the emperor died. During the 1850’s though, Canada was mainly a set of territories
just above the US Northeast and Midwest, and wasn’t so much spread out over ⅓ of North
America as it is today. Thus, the rivalry between Upper and Lower Canada was stronger
than ever, both naturally competing for greater influence. Despite the modern politics of
the area though, this wasn’t necessarily so much to do with French-Catholic vs. English-Protestant
politics, as French-Quebeckers at that time didn’t exactly have all that much political
sway in the region, but that’s a complicated history for a whole other time. This however
didn’t change the fact that there were two significant regions still fighting for greater
influence. In 1856 the Legislative Council was brought forward to decide which of the
five cities would become the permanent capital… and after 48 votes no one could agree on a
single city. Since that got them literally nowhere, it
was decided in March, 1857 that this would be a decision for Queen Victoria. Ottawa had
been jockeying for the position of capital as well, and actually had a good deal of support
in London, largely from Prince Albert and Governor General Sir Edmund Head, who had
traveled to all five potential cities and concluded that Ottawa would probably be the
best candidate (by the way, for those of you who live in republics, the Governor General
is essentially a colony/country’s local representative of the British monarch). It
was thus decided that October that Ottawa would be the new and permanent capital of
Canada. Ottawa, beforehand known as Bytown, was a
somewhat smaller city but had actually quite a lot going for it geographically. First,
it is more or less equally distant from Canada’s other major settlements of Kingston, Montreal,
and Toronto, roughly 160 kilometers from each of the first two and 350 from Toronto. Second,
it sat on the Ottawa River, which meant that it was just on the Ontarian side of the Ontario-Québec
border, kind of like how Washington DC sits on the northern side of the Potomac, just
across from Virginia. Finally, it was also said to be easily shielded enough from attack
from the US as it was deep into the country… by Canadian standards, I guess. Ottawa was
kind of a second-choice compromise, with Toronto and Montreal holding parliamentary meetings
each for four years afterwards while everything in Ottawa got built up to capital standards,
finally holding parliament by 1866, when they got that fancy building to do so in.
The following year the new Dominion of Canada was proclaimed for Ottawa to be the capital
of, and Canada continued to grow into the country it would eventually be today, now
encompassing all nine provinces and all three arctic territories… wait hang on… all
ten provinces (wow that could be an interesting video). Ottawa grew alongside Canada as well,
and so did basically every other city in Canada, most notably Toronto and Montreal, who each
grew and competed for the spot of biggest city in Canada, and being two of the most
iconic and well known. With that in mind, seeing as to how the political, economic,
and cultural centers of a country can shift over time, perhaps it’s best that a neutral
location between the two was chosen after all.
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