A capital that moved four times before 1857
Before Ottawa, the united Province of Canada, formed in 1841 from Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec), could not settle on a single seat of government at all. Parliament sat in Kingston from 1841, then Montreal from 1844, then alternated every few years between Toronto and Quebec City, a deliberately awkward compromise nobody liked, since it meant moving the entire government's records and offices back and forth across the province on a schedule. Montreal never recovered as a candidate after 1849, when a mob of English speaking Tories, furious over a bill compensating rebels from the 1837 uprising, burned down the parliament building there.
In 1856 the legislature had had enough of the rotation and put the question to a vote among six candidate towns: Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City, Kingston, Hamilton and the newly renamed Ottawa (previously Bytown). Quebec City won that ballot 64 to 56, but the Legislative Council refused to fund a capital there, and rather than reopen a fight that had already wrecked one building, the assembly passed a resolution asking the Queen to choose for them.
Why a border town with a canal won
Queen Victoria's choice, relayed to Canada's Governor General by the Colonial Secretary in a letter dated 31 December 1857, was Ottawa, then a town of under 8,000 people known mainly for its lumber mills. The reasoning that survives from the period comes down to three practical points rather than any particular fondness for the place. First, Ottawa sat almost exactly on the line between English speaking Upper Canada and French speaking Lower Canada, which meant neither half of the fragile union could accuse the government of favouring the other, the same problem that had ruled out Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City each in turn.
Second, and just as important, Ottawa stood at the junction of the Ottawa River and the Rideau Canal, a military waterway built between 1826 and 1832 to give British forces a supply route to Kingston and Lake Ontario that avoided the St. Lawrence River, which ran directly along the exposed American border. Memories of the War of 1812, when American forces had raided along that same St. Lawrence corridor, were still recent enough that a capital tucked inland, defensible and connected by water without hugging the border, mattered to colonial planners in a way it no longer would to a later generation. Third, unlike Montreal or Toronto, Ottawa was a genuinely blank slate: no existing legislature, newspaper establishment or business elite there had a stake in shaping how the new government looked, which made it easier for all sides to accept.
Confederation makes the choice permanent
Choosing Ottawa did not end the argument immediately. A reconsideration motion against the Queen's decision actually carried the assembly in July 1858, and only a government resignation and the manoeuvre known as the Double Shuffle kept the choice alive. The the funding bill for the new parliament buildings scraped through in 1859 by a margin of only a few votes. Construction went ahead regardless: the cornerstone was laid by the Prince of Wales in 1860, and the Gothic Revival Centre, East and West Blocks that still stand on Parliament Hill officially opened on 6 June 1866, a year before they were needed for anything larger than the old Province of Canada.
That larger purpose arrived on 1 July 1867, when the British North America Act united the Province of Canada with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick into the Dominion of Canada, a federation that would go on to add six more provinces and three territories over the following century. Ottawa's new buildings simply carried on as the seat of the bigger country's Parliament, so the choice made to settle a colonial squabble in 1857 became the capital of an entire nation ten years later, written straight into section 16 of the British North America Act: the seat of government of Canada shall be Ottawa.
The leading cities the crown was choosing between
| City | Case for it | Why it lost |
|---|---|---|
| Ottawa (Bytown) | On the Ontario-Quebec border, defensible, served by the Rideau Canal | Won. Chosen by Queen Victoria, December 1857 |
| Quebec City | Historic capital of Lower Canada, won the last legislative vote 64 to 56 | Legislative Council refused to fund a capital there |
| Montreal | Largest city, commercial and financial centre of the colony | Its parliament building was burned by a mob in 1849 |
| Toronto | Capital of Upper Canada, growing fast, English speaking establishment | Seen by Lower Canada as favouring the English speaking half |
| Kingston | The first capital of the united Province of Canada, in 1841 | Too small and too close to the American border to hold the role |
Details cross checked against the Parliament of Canada's own history of the parliamentary buildings and the Historical Society of Ottawa's account of the 1857 decision.
So why not Toronto?
Toronto is Canada's largest city and the capital of Ontario, but it was never a serious rival for the federal role beyond that first 1857 vote, for the same reason Montreal was not: a capital sitting inside one half of a country built from two founding language groups was always going to look like a thumb on the scale. Ottawa's whole appeal in 1857 was that it belonged to neither Toronto's English speaking Ontario nor Quebec City's French speaking Lower Canada outright, and by the time Canada had grown into ten provinces, moving the capital a second time to its largest city was never seriously proposed. Toronto stayed, and remains, Canada's biggest city and its financial centre. It is simply not, and was never chosen to be, its political one, and Ottawa is just one of nearly 200 capitals worth knowing, the rest covered in the capitals quiz.
Quick facts
- Ottawa was chosen as capital of the Province of Canada by Queen Victoria, announced 31 December 1857.
- Parliament's original buildings on Parliament Hill opened 6 June 1866, a year ahead of Confederation.
- Canada became a country on 1 July 1867, under the British North America Act.
- Ottawa was known as Bytown until 1855, named for Colonel John By, who oversaw the Rideau Canal's construction.