Most people in Ottawa speak either English or French, and some speak both or a little bit of both. Labels, street signs and advertisements are all in both languages. It’s majority English speakers, but this depends on the part of the city, EX. Gatineau is French-dominant.

Ottawa is actually multiple cities in a trench coat, they share amenities, politics and schools, but sometimes their addresses remain, depending on the documentation (which is not confusing at all). Notable cities include Nepean and Orléans, but there are others

Ottawa has a very poor nightlife, things close down early in the night, the club scene is lacking, and the offers of public transit are awful, especially at night.

The public transit (OCtranspo) has made international news with how bad it is. More on that in a later post.

There are two universities in Ottawa, University of Ottawa (uOttawa) which is in the downtown area, and Carleton University, which is near Little Italy. There is also a college (equivalent to a community college for my fellow americans) called Algonquin College (affectionately known as the gonq or gonq).

There are many sports teams in Ottawa given it is the capital of Canada, the Ottawa Senators are the NHL team (they suck) as of 2023 the Ottawa Charge are the PWHL team (they’re great!!), the 67s are their juniors team, there are other sports but that would need its own post tbh, plus I only really care about hockey :p

There are a lot of Senators fans in Ottawa, and people who aren't Senators fans usually come from a family who have been fans of the NHL since before the founding of the Senators, or who don't originate from Ottawa. Most often you'll see fans of Montréal and Toronto, but I've seen fans of all the Canadian teams around here, as well as some of the Northeastern teams like Boston or New York. The biggest beef is with the Leafs (Toronto).

Ottawa tends to butt heads with Toronto a lot, with Montréal a close second.

Ottawa is extremely multicultural, there are a lot of immigrants and those who are first (like me!) or second generation. Plus a very large Lebanese and Chinese population. I can write a whole post on that so I won't get too much into it, but Ottawa has a lot of variety in culture.

It is simultaneously very cold and very hot. It goes from -40 to 40C (-40 to 104F) in its extreme. Usually the range is smaller than that, but we'll write a post on Ottawa's weather shortly. The cold months get similar to the temperatures seen in Moscow.

Like Boston, we think our city is awful, but we're proud to be from it.