Ever heard anyone rave about their visit to Ottawa? Us neither. However, during a visit to Mazatlan, Mexico, earlier this year we met a woman from Ottawa who encouraged us to visit. We are so glad we heeded her advice.
Ottawa is the capital of Canada. It is smaller than Montreal, but adorned with all the great architecture and museums of a nation’s capital. It sits on the Ottawa River, which is quite wide and pretty.
Our first night, we found a great swimming spot for Charlie at a park boat ramp on the Ottawa River. Afterwards, we had a delicious dinner at a brew pub located in an old mill building from the 19th century. Then we shopped at Costco and restocked our provisions. The product selection was quite different from what we find in the states, but the prices were still good.
The next morning, we headed downtown and watched the changing of the guard at Parliament Hill. The 30-minute ceremony began with a parade led by a uniformed band with pipers, followed by two companies of guards clad in the same Beefeater uniforms seen at Buckingham Palace.
The ritual inspections by an officer and a sergeant included fixing bayonets and later removing them, while an officer and a soldier marched back and forth, the officer with a sword and the soldier carrying the colors. The officers of each guard exchanged the “keys to the garden”. The national anthem was played before all the soldiers followed the band in an exit out of the grounds and down the street.
Afterwards we visited the excellent Canadian Museum of War. They have an amazing collection of displays, artifacts and vehicles from every war Canada participated in from the battles alongside First Nation tribes to the Iraq War. There was a special exhibit about the American Civil War and its impact on Canada. As many as 30-40,000 escaped slaves found refuge here via the Underground Railroad. Canada feared that, at the end of the war, the Union Army, which was the largest in the world, might invade Canada to annex them. That was a prime motivation in the successful effort to confederate the provinces into a unified country that could raise an army for mutual defense.
It’s understandable why Canadians were nervous. We learned that in addition to the attack by Benedict Arnold and Montgomery against Montreal and Quebec during the Revolutionary War, the British Army, local militias and First Nations people were able to repel another attack from the US during the War of 1812. At that time, about 7.5 million people lived in the US but only about 500,000 in Canada. If the US had been successful in either of these incursions, Canada would not be an independent country today.
Yet despite its population advantage, the United States had only about 12,000 men in uniform, including “too many incompetent officers and too many raw, untrained recruits,” explained Donald R. Hickey, a history professor at Wayne State College and author of various books on the War of 1812. A number of other factors also favored Canada at the war’s outset. For one thing, the British controlled the Great Lakes and were therefore better able to move troops and supplies.
Moreover, they received support from Canadians, who many Americans falsely believed would welcome them as liberators, and from Native American tribes worried about U.S. expansionism. “The USA was woefully unprepared,” Hickey said. “Plus, the logistical challenges of waging war on a distant frontier were daunting if not insuperable.”
The invaders suffered from poor leadership, reluctance from US militia men to cross the border into Canada and British reinforcements arriving after the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
We also took a tour of one of the Parliament buildings. Unfortunately, the Main Parliament building is closed for a major renovation that won’t be completed until about 2032. So we visited the West Block, which is temporarily the home of the House of Commons. An architect enclosed an interior courtyard and put a shaded glass roof over it to create a large assembly room. The shades can be adjusted to allow just the right amount of light. There are currently 343 MPs in the House of Commons – each one representing about 120,000 residents. The MPs are affiliated with five different political parties. One is independent.
