Ottawa: An Illustrated History

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Ottawa has, for a capital city, an unusual history. This well-researched history, which includes statistical tables, extensive notes on sources, and index, is lavishly illustrated with period photographs of the persons and places behind the story. It follows the development of Ottawa from its early days as a rough (sometimes very rough) and rugged military outpost and lumber town, through its development into the queenly city of today. It is a chequered history, marred by racial hostility and violence; the story of a town ruled successively by the military, the merchants, and then, definitively, by the presence of the seat of government. Like most Canadian frontier towns, what was to be a great city was allowed to spring up “any old how”; but today careful planning and the addition of such monumental architecture as the projected new Canadian Museum of Civilization, are destined to give the old city a space-age look.

Ottawa has always been, and doubtless will continue to be, a patchwork community “reconciling economic bigness with a mosaic of individual and community life, on what is still, in effect, the frontier.” She does so with increasing grace.