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^ You just bitched about Ottawa being compared to cities 3-5x the size and then compare Edm/Cgy to NYC? WTF? Double standard much. Compared to Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary are much more energetic cities. Compared to NY? Of course not, get real.

Yeah, it isn't like Canberra or Brasilia in that it wasn't a wholly master-planned city built from scratch, but Ottawa served little purpose before being crowned the capital. It would not have naturally became a large city (by Canadian standards) had it not been crowned as such. There wasn't anything naturally lucrative about the area Ottawa sits on. It was the hinterlands and that's partly why Ottawa was crowned capital.