BYTOWN BICENTENNIAL BYTES!
HERITAGE OTTAWA
To help celebrate the 200th anniversary of the founding of Bytown and the beginning of work on the Rideau Canal, Heritage Ottawa is launching BICENTENNIAL BYTES, a series of social media posts about some of the key places — landscapes, buildings, and structures — that help tell our shared story.
If you're not already following us on social media, now's the time. We wouldn't want you to miss these fun bicentennial facts!
The story of Bytown begins with its interconnecting waterways and natural gathering places along the well-travelled trading routes used by Indigenous peoples for millennia.
The establishment of a settlement by Col. John By, Royal Engineer charged with overseeing the construction of the Rideau Canal, brought changes to the landscape that negatively impacted places sacred to the Algonquin, places like Akikodjiwan (Chaudière Falls).
By 1827, permanent stone structures had been erected to facilitate canal construction: the Ordnance and Engineers Building and the Commissariat, now home to the Bytown Museum. Residences, schools, businesses and places of worship soon followed as settlement expanded across Upper and Lower Town to meet the needs of a burgeoning lumber industry in the Ottawa Valley.
By 1855, the rough and tumble town had been chosen as the capital and renamed Ottawa. A rush of investment saw grand new buildings and structures erected, befitting its sudden important status, and with it a growing population and greater demands for housing, entertainment, recreation and cultural experiences. Big banks, large hotels and shops, expansive exhibition halls, and decorated theatres soon followed.
Two hundred years later we can still enjoy buildings, structures, monuments and landscapes that help tell the stories of how Bytown grew into the city we know today. Heritage Ottawa looks forward to sharing BICENTENNIAL BYTES of information with you about places that matter to all of us.
Our acknowledgment: The National Capital Region remains unceded Algonquin-Anishinaabeg territory.
