No one understood why
Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the capital in 1857. Some members of the press believed that she simply closed her eyes and randomly picked a spot on the map. Both
Montreal and
Toronto were in up for the honor so Ottawa was considered a sorry compromise. At the time, it was nothing more than a
small logging town. In the end, most agree that the Queen chose the capital carefully
considering the fact that there were both
French and
English speaking citizens and it sits on the border between
Ontario and
Quebec.
Ottawa is the fourth largest city in Canada and has a population of approximately 800 000 citizens. The main employers are government and high tech (notably Nortel, Corel and JDS Uniphase).
Ottawa has the most highly educated population in Canada, approximately 50% of the citizens hold university degrees. It is also the most wired city, 79% of households have access to computers and 61% of the households have internet access.
Some famous people from Ottawa include: Alanis Morisette, Matthew Perry, Norm MacDonald and Tom Green (village idiot turned global village idiot, sorry everyone).