Ziplining and beekeeping may not be your typical city break activities – but then again, Ottawa is not your typical city. Sandwiched between the more sought-after Toronto and Montreal, it’s also not typically at the top of travellers’ wish-lists. When I started planning my visit, the question I kept being asked was ‘why go there?’. But by the time I came back, I was asking ‘why don’t more people go there?’.
With its history, architecture, museums, river walks and cycle paths, Ottawa offers the best bits of both a city break and countryside retreat. The Canadian capital is best described as a rural metropolis – imagine picking up the City of Westminster and putting it in the middle of the South Downs. Downtown, on the southern bank of the Ottawa river, is its Parliament Hill, with government buildings bustling with civil servants. Ceremonial Guard is full of scarlet tunics and bearskin hats, its skyline dominated by the Peace Tower, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Big Ben’s Elizabeth Tower.
At its base is the House of Commons, which offers free 40-minute guided tours when the Parliament of Canada is not in session. After passing through airport-style security, you walk past walls covered with portraits of former prime ministers. The Commons chamber feels familiar, with a large ornate Speaker’s Chair surrounded by rows of bright green seats. When someone asks ‘Why green?’, the guide replies: ‘We copied the British.’
To the right of parliament is what appears to be an enormous French château. Built in 1912, the Fairmont Château Laurier hotel – named after Canada’s seventh prime minister, Wilfrid Laurier – has played host to hundreds of dignitaries, including the Queen and Winston Churchill. It was here in 1941 that photographer Yousuf Karsh abruptly removed Churchill’s cigar without permission, resulting in ‘The Roaring Lion’, the famous portrait of that scowl. The original hung in the lobby on the same wall Churchill was standing in front of when it was taken. Shortly after my visit, local news reported that the photograph had been stolen and replaced with a copy at some time in the past six months.
In the warmer months the best way to get around a city with hundreds of miles of pathways is by bike. In the winter the 202km long Rideau Canal freezes over and you can skate 7.8km of it – stopping off for a hot toddy along the way. I pick up a Rentabike and follow the canal path to Lansdowne. Ottawa has almost 1,200 working farms in its city limits (many of which you can visit) and it’s here, every Sunday, that you’ll find at the year-round farmers’ market, with buffalo, bison and elk all on the menu.
The Commons chamber feels familiar, with a large ornate Speaker’s Chair surrounded by rows of bright green seats. When someone asks ‘Why green?’, the guide replies ‘We copied the British’
Further along, as the canal joins the Rideau River, is the Gees Bees Honey Farm – where city and country truly collide. I’m handed a bee suit that covers my head, arms and upper body but I still approach the hives carefully – I’ve worn shorts. Owner Matt emerges from the woods wearing jeans, a T-shirt and sandals. He doesn’t need a bee suit – these are his bees. Matt covers the hives with smoke to confuse the bees so they don’t realise there’s an intruder, removes the lid and takes out boards showing the different stages of life within the hive. As we scoop out a bit of honey, a drone bee stings Matt on the arm, but he merely shrugs off it off, sprays some smoke and rubs on a little honey. I pull my own suit tighter.
I return the bike and stroll over to ByWard Market. Ottawa has undergone something of food revival in recent years and the market’s restaurants and maze of food stalls are at the heart of it. President Obama visited bakery Le Moulin de Provence in 2009 and left with a maple leaf-shaped shortbread cookie with ‘Canada’ scribbled in white icing on top, declaring: ‘I love this country’. You can now buy those same Obama cookies for $4 – and take one away in a commemorative tin for an extra $4.
C’est Bon runs walking tours of the neighbourhood, which is a great way to discover the best of what ByWard has to offer. I start with Lebanese – falafel and freshly baked meat pies from Eddy’s –followed by a selection of flavoured popcorn (jalapeno and truffle), tacos from Mexican cantina Corazon de Maiz, and duck breast poutine from the Clarendon Tavern. Food tours are thirsty work so my next stop is the Tea Store, where floor-to-ceiling jars are filled with flavoured tea from chilli chocolate to liquorice root. The tour finishes with maple leaf cupcakes from The Cupcake Lounge and a local favourite, the Beaver Tail – not the savoury tail of the very chewy (so I’m told) actual rodent but a hot, sweet, stretched and folded pastry, covered in cinnamon, sugar and lemon.
Across from ByWard Market is the National Gallery of Canada, one of seven museums within walking distance of each other – and easy to spot by Louise Bourgeois’s 30ft spider guarding its entrance. The gallery is impressive, one of the largest in North America, displaying more than 40,000 works. Everyone who’s anyone is hanging on these walls – from Van Gogh to Monet, Duchamp to Klimt, but it’s Jack B. Yeats’s 1918 painting ‘On Drumcliffe Strand’, with its huddling, cloaked women and vibrant, almost neon oranges, that I find difficult to walk away from.
Wandering through the warren of hallways displaying old masters, indigenous and contemporary artists I find something unexpected: a chapel. In 1972 the Rideau Street Convent was demolished and the interior rebuilt – brick by brick, stained glass window by stained glass window – inside the National Gallery. Speakers line the edge of the chapel, each one playing a single voice from a 40-part choir.
A walk along the Ottawa river brings me to my next stop, Interzip Rogers, the world’s first interprovincial zipline. I collect my helmet, step into my harness and – after a quick check it’s tight in all the right places – I climb the 120ft tower. A thumbs-up to the operator releases the safety brake and I soar 1,400ft across the Ottawa River from Ottawa, Ontario to Gatineau, Quebec, with the Victorian architecture of Parliament Hill behind me.
If flying across the Ottawa River isn’t quite your thing there’s plenty to do on it, too – including paddleboarding, kayaking and white-water rafting. Ottawa has some of the best rapids in the world. First-timers who want to stick to the city can try class 1 and class 2 rapids at Ottawa City Rafting. But if you think you can handle class 3 and 4 rapids with names like Butcher’s Knife and Hells Half Mile, you’ll need to drive about 90 minutes out of town to the family run Owl River Rafting.
If you want the relaxed pace of the countryside combined with the buzz of the city all in one trip, give Canada’s forgotten capital a try.
For more information visit Ottawa Tourism and Explore Canada. Double rooms at the Lord Elgin Hotel (just a few minutes’ walk from Parliament Hill) start from CAD 169 (£110) per night.
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