Remembering Ottawa: Stories and Legacies

Commemoration is a way to remember together significant community histories, stories and legacies, i.e., people’s collective memories. Commemorative activity preserves collective memory and helps to pass along knowledge of achievements and difficult pasts from generation to generation.

As part of its cultural development mandate, the City of Ottawa is developing a municipal commemoration policy to guide commemorative programs and activities in our city. Diverse stories, histories, cultures, communities and legacies abound in Ottawa, and the new policy must reflect this diversity. Remembering Ottawa: Stories and Legacies will ensure that these compelling memories live on. It’s important that the new municipal commemoration policy reflects the diversity that is in Ottawa.

Ottawa is unique:

It rests on the unceded territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin Host Nation;
Ottawa is home to a diverse urban Indigenous community of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people;
It is also home to diverse immigrant and equity-deserving communities;
The Ottawa landscape connects neighbouring urban, suburban and rural lifestyles;
Ottawa serves as both Canada’s National Capital and also a multilingual, medium-sized North American city with French and English as official languages.

Video

To encourage public engagement with this commemoration policy project, we invited local residents and professionals with deep knowledge of Ottawa collective memories to express their views on commemoration in a video. The role of the City of Ottawa in promoting reconciliation, diversity, inclusion, and sustainable development through commemoration is highlighted.

We would like to share their ideas with you here.

What We Heard

As citizens of Ottawa, you participated in conversations on this policy development project by posting Your Ideas to our engagement questions.

In 2022, EVOQ Strategies and Archipel Research and Consulting jointly conducted a Survey of Past/Existing City of Ottawa Commemorative Programs and Policies that identified gaps, opportunities and obstacles for the implementation of a comprehensive municipal commemoration policy for the City. The report is available here.

On January 20^th, 2023 the Assembly of Seven Generations hosted an Indigenous Youth Public Engagement Session and invited guests from the Anishinabe Algonquin Host Nation and the First Nation, Inuit, and Métis communities of Ottawa to express their views on commemoration and their recommendations for the new City policy. The report is available here.

On March 20^th, 2023 Capital Heritage Connexion hosted a hybrid Bilingual Public Engagement Session to gather public feedback on policy proposals. The in-person session at Ottawa City Hall was accompanied by zoom breakout group discussions. The report is available here.

Next Steps