What is the capital of Canada?

Ottawa is the fourth largest city in Canada and it was chosen precisely because it was not one of the first three.

Before Ottawa

The Province of Canada, formed in 1841, could not decide where to put its government, so it moved it: Kingston, then Montreal, then alternating between Toronto and Quebec City every few years. Nobody thought this was a good system. In 1857 the legislature asked Queen Victoria to choose, and she chose Ottawa, a rough lumber town that had been called Bytown until 1855.

Why Ottawa

The case made to her was practical rather than flattering:

• it sat on the boundary between Canada West and Canada East, so it belonged to neither
• it was far enough from the United States border to be defensible, which mattered four years before the American Civil War
• it was on the Ottawa and Rideau rivers, so it could be reached
• it was small enough that no rival city would feel beaten by it

Parliament moved in 1866, a year before Confederation, and the choice carried over into the new Dominion.

What is in Ottawa

Parliament Hill, the Supreme Court of Canada, the Governor General at Rideau Hall, the prime minister, every federal department and the embassies. Toronto is the largest city and the capital of Ontario; Montreal is the largest city in Quebec, whose capital is Quebec City.

Australia settled the same argument the same way, fifty years later and with a city built from nothing.