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Ottawa ontairo buried in beachwood cemetery Ottawa Ontario
An Ottawan, eh.
Ot-ta-wa
It was first settled after 1815.
Jehiel Collins, in 1809, became the first European settler in the Ottawa region. In 1826, Lieutenant Colonel By and the Earl of Dalhousie picked the area as the beginning of the Rideau Canal. The community that grew around the construction was known as Bytown, after Lieutenant Colonel By. Bytown was incorporated as a town in 1850. When Bytown was incorporated as a city in 1855, it was renamed Ottawa. In 1857, Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the capital of the pre-Confederation Province of Canada. Legend has it that Ottawa was chosen for two reasons: it was many miles distant from the US border and therefore less vulnerable to attack, and because Ottawa was usually full of rough and ready lumberjacks, in the event of such an attack a fighting force would be easily and quickly assembled.