Ottawa is Canadian

I am going to Ottawa this weekend!

I love Ottawa. As a pure-bred Torontonian, you may well ask why. Ottawa is no world-class city (as Toronto so often aspires to be, but is rarely recognized as such ... but that's a separate post altogether). Ottawa is nice, clean, and cold -- hella cold. I was told once by a friend who lived there that it is the coldest capital city -- colder than Moscow. (Actually, this is not quite true. But it is among the top-seven coldest capital cities in the world -- see here for more info.)

But Ottawa is much more than simply nice, clean, and cold (ah, ...the archetypal Canadian stereotype); and the reasons why I love Ottawa are more complex than that. Like the country it governs, Ottawa is many things -- some great, some not memorable. But (perhaps unlike the country it governs, some would argue), Ottawa does seem to have a clear sense of identity. Ottawa knows what it is, and it embraces that.

Ottawa is a political town. It is colloquial; robust; sturdy; a little bit British. Ottawa is parliamentarian. The parliament buildings overlook the Ottawa river (keeping an eye on Hull, Quebec). Ottawa is towering, and strong -- a capital city this far north will never fall. Ottawa is, to me, somehow quintessentially Canadian.

Ottawa is where ambition goes to retire; it is no Wall Street or Washington, D.C. -- but neither is it a city so far gone into the world of politics (as many American state capitals are) that they have lost sight of what life outside of politics is all about. Real people still live in Ottawa. It has all the trappings of a modest cultural centre -- if not the 'buzz' of being the 'it' place to be.

In southern Ontario -- and especially Toronto, which the closest place in Canada to the states without actually being part of or in America -- Ottawa is the closest that one can get to the Canadian North without going too far from home. Just as the United States' capital, Washington, D.C., sits between the northern and southern states as if holding them together with a thumb-tack, Ottawa sits at one of Canada's many fault lines. It is a sign post to the north; it is the pulley that anchors our clothesline of Canadian cities, most of which are less than 200 miles from the American border. It is an officially bilingual city (on a continent of unofficially multilingual cities), and it is that vital link between the English Canadian establishment and the ever-politicized French Canadian homeland, culture, and way of life.

Ottawa is eating Beaver Tails (or "Queues des Castor") on the Rideau Canal (I considered going to school in Ottawa for the sole privilege of being able to skate to class or work every day).

I have not spent as much time there as I would like. Hopefully this weekend will become part of a remedy for that.