Founding of Ottawa

Ottawa grew out of Bytown, a rough settlement that arose in the 1820s where Lieutenant-Colonel John By was building the Rideau Canal, a military waterway meant to give British North America a route safe from American attack. The settlement was renamed Ottawa and incorporated as a city in 1855, taking its name from the Odawa people and from the river that runs beside it. Queen Victoria chose it as the capital of the Province of Canada in 1857, partly because it lay on the border between English-speaking Ontario and French-speaking Quebec and was farther from the American frontier than rivals like Toronto and Montreal. It became the capital of the new Dominion of Canada in 1867.

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