The capital of Canada and centre of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton, Ottawa is located on the Ottawa river on Ontario's eastern boundary with Québec, about 200 km west of Montréal.

Population
With 323 340 inhabitants in 1996, Ottawa is Canada's thirteenth-largest city (fourth by CMA). The contours of this population have persisted for 150 years: about one-quarter are French Roman Catholics, one-quarter Irish Roman Catholics, and most of the remainder Protestants of British origin.
Small communities - chiefly Jewish, German and Italian - arrived at the turn of the century and now make up about 5% of the population.
An Arabic-speaking (mainly Lebanese) community and more recently an East African community have also struck roots in Ottawa.
An older Asian community has recently experienced much growth largely through an influx of Vietnamese.

Economy
Though patterns in the Ottawa work force have undergone dramatic change, "service" to a dominant industry has been a continuing motif. Original settlers serviced the needs of canal construction, the squared timber trade and agriculture. In 1861 "industrial" jobs, most associated with sawmilling, comprised about 48% of the labour force. Government employment, only 10% in 1871, grew by 1971 to about one-third, including large numbers of women, while manufacturing fell to about 6%.
Public sector employment reached a peak of about one-quarter of the labour force in the 1980s, but downsizing and decentralization in the 1990s, coupled with growth in the HIGH-TECH sector, have created a more balanced distribution in the region, which is now as much "silicon valley north" as the "nation's capital."
The high-tech sector, rooted in digital communication, has expanded to embrace both hardware and software applications from computer-assisted design to BIOTECHNICAL services, with more than 90% of the product exported outside the region.
Printing, including bank note printing, remains strong in the region, as does remote sensing, contracting a major share of the world's business.

Cultural Life
CARLETON UNIVERSITY is located in the southwest. The UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA, nearer the central core, offers programs in both English and French and, though formally secular, embodies much of the tradition of the Oblate Order, which ran it for many years. St Paul's University is affiliated with the University of Ottawa. Through Algonquin College and its French counterpart, La Cité Collégiale, Ottawa is also the centre of the region's community college system.
Much of the city's cultural life and most of its facilities are dominated by the federal government. Almost all federal cultural agencies have showcases in Ottawa, including the NATIONAL MUSEUMS, the NATIONAL GALLERY, the NATIONAL ARCHIVES and the NATIONAL LIBRARY.
The NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE supports only its orchestra on site, but is the venue for travelling companies and for the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra.
The city also supports several theatre companies, including the Great Canadian Theatre Company and the Ottawa Little Theatre.
It also houses a number of artistic groups such as the Ottawa Art Gallery in the former county court house, now known as Arts Court. Schools in the area provide professional training in dance, the visual and theatre arts.
The Bytown Museum operates in one of Lieutenant-Colonel By's original buildings, and the city operates a municipal archives, and, on the properties of the pioneer Billings Family, the Billings Estate Museum.