There are few if any individuals who have had a greater impact on the settlement that would become Ottawa than Lt. Col. John By.  This episode is a biography of the English engineer who is credited with the creation of the Rideau Canal and...

In this episode, we conclude the war part of the War of 1812, setting up the diminished status of the Indigenous allies, despite their heroic participation in the war, and establishing the justification for the Rideau Canal. 

The War of 1812 was a central event in the foundation of the Canadas.  It also served to settle the American War of Independence and bring a political norm to North America that there were two distinct countries, rather than Free and Occup...

Philemon Wright was the founder of Hull, the first settlement in the Ottawa area that could be called "urban".  Migrating from Massachusetts in the winter of 1800, he and his family migrated the shoals of the Lower Canada and Upper Canada ...

In this episode, we look at the circle of settlement closing in around what would become Ottawa.  In the south by Loyalists, and from the east by way of Montreal.