Celebrating Ottawa's Heritage

Ottawa is a great place to be to celebrate during the summer, and especially for Canada Day. 2007 is special as it's the 150th anniversary of Queen Victoria naming the City as the nation's capital.
We are also celebrating the 175th anniversary of the completion of the Rideau Canal and take pride in the announcement of it being named a World Heritage Site.

Colonel John By, an Englishman under whose direction the canal was built, is remembered in the City as the Ontario Civic Holiday is named for him.

Impressive memorial markers at St James Cemetery, Gatineau (Hull), to two other men without whom Ottawa would not have developed as it did, are shown in the picture. In the foreground, partially obscured by foliage, is the memorial to Philomen Wright who came from New England to develop land just across the Ottawa River from the City. The more distant white monument is to Nicholas Sparkes, an Irish immigrant, who developed much of the land on which Parliament Hill and adjacent Ottawa now stand.