Ottawa
Queen Victoria's 1857 compromise capital became a lumber town, then 'Silicon Valley North.' Now 13.3% tech employment—highest in North America. By 2026: testing whether government can move at Shopify speed.
Ottawa exists because politicians couldn't agree on anything else. After 200 parliamentary votes failed to choose a capital, Queen Victoria selected this 'Arctic lumber village' of 5,000 people on December 31, 1857—a compromise so unpopular that three changed votes would have rejected it. The choice made strategic sense: unlike Toronto, Kingston, Montreal, or Quebec City, Ottawa sat safely distant from the American border, at the mouth of the Rideau Canal built after the War of 1812 demonstrated how vulnerable the St. Lawrence was to invasion.
The city began as Bytown in 1826, named for Colonel John By, who commanded the Royal Engineers building the canal. Irish immigrants and French Canadians did the brutal work of construction, then stayed to work the lumber trade. By mid-century, some of Canada's largest sawmills operated at Chaudière Falls. In 1854, Bytown became Ottawa and was incorporated as a city—just three years before the Queen's fateful decision transformed a resource extraction town into a capital.
The federal government dominates Ottawa's economy in ways that shape everything else. Parliament Hill draws lobbyists, consultants, and policy shops the way a salt lick draws wildlife. But the city's second act came in the 1990s, when Nortel's rise created 'Silicon Valley North' in Kanata. Nortel collapsed, but the ecosystem survived: today, Kanata North hosts 540 companies and 33,000 employees, contributing $13 billion annually to GDP. Shopify, the Ottawa-born e-commerce platform, became Canada's largest public company. Tech workers now represent 13.3% of Ottawa's employment—the highest concentration in North America, higher than San Francisco's 11.6%.
By 2026, Ottawa's tech-government symbiosis faces a test. Prime Minister Mark Carney's government has begun collaborating with Shopify on policy redesign, and the SR&ED tax credit distributed $4.5 billion in the last fiscal year. Whether Ottawa can maintain its dual identity—administrative capital and tech hub—depends on whether the federal bureaucracy can learn to move at startup speed.