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Ottawa's primary employers are the Canadian federal government and high technology. Major companies such as Nortel, Alcatel, JDS Uniphase, Mitel, Bell Canada, TELUS, and Corel have offices in the city.
Ottawa is home to two major league sports team, the Ottawa Senators (established 1992) of the National Hockey League and the Ottawa Renegades of the Canadian Football League. It is also home to the AAA farm team of the Baltimore Orioles, the Ottawa Lynx of the International League, and the Ottawa 67's of the Ontario Hockey League.
It also supports many casual sporting activities, such as skating on the Rideau Canal in winter, biking and jogging along the Ottawa River and Rideau Canal in summer, and sailing on Lac Deschenes, part of the Ottawa River.
The Ottawa region was long home to First Nations peoples who were part of the Algonquin. The first European settlement in the Ottawa region was that of Philemon Wright who started a community on the Quebec side of the river in 1800. Wright discovered that transporting timber by river from the Ottawa Valley to Montreal was possible and Ottawa was soon booming based almost entirely off timber. The city grew even further in importance when the Rideau Canal was constructed by Colonel John By. The city was then known as Bytown, but it was incorporated as Ottawa in 1855.
Original city leaders of Bytown include a number of Wright's sons, most notably Ruggles Wright. Nicholas Sparks, Braddish Billings and Abraham Dow were the first to settle on the Ontario side of the Ottawa river.
On December 31, 1857 Queen Victoria, was asked to choose a capital for Canada, and chose Ottawa. There are various popular stories explaining this decision. One explanation is that she did so by sticking her hatpin on a map roughly halfway between Toronto and Montreal; Ottawa was the nearest city to where it landed. Another is that she liked watercolours she had seen of the area. In reality, the primary objective was probably to avoid antagonising either English speakers or French speakers. The other candidates— Quebec City, Montreal, Kingston and Toronto—were perceived as too firmly rooted either in English or in French tradition; Ottawa seemed more neutral. Also, at a time when the US was considered a military threat, Ottawa was situated further from the border.
The original Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa burned down on February 3, 1916. The House of Commons was temporarily relocated to the Victorian era building which was then the Victoria Museum, and is currently (2004) the Canadian Museum of Nature, located about 1 km south of Parliament Hill at the opposite end of Metcalfe Street. A new Centre Block was completed in 1922, the centre-piece of which is a dominant gothic revival styled structure known as the Peace Tower which has become a common emblem of the city.
In 2001, the city of Ottawa was amalgamated with the suburbs of Nepean, Kanata, Gloucester, Rockcliffe Park, Vanier and Cumberland , and the rural townships of West Carleton , Osgoode , Rideau and Goulbourn , along with the systems and infrastructure of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton, to become one municipality. Ottawa-Carleton used to be just Carleton County before the 1969 and consisted of what is now the City of Ottawa except for Cumberland.
See also: List of Ottawa mayors
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