Quote:
Originally Posted by MolsonExport
Ottawa was and is a good location for Canada's capital, being on the border of the two most populous provinces, being adjacent to the two biggest cities, and straddling the French-English divide.
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The joke is that Queen Victoria chose the Canadian capital in the 1800s by covering her eyes and randomly placing her finger on a map.
More likely it was a compromise after decades of the capital flip-flopping between various cities either too French, too English (Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto) or even too close to the hostile American border (Kingston, Ont.).
While Canada has expanded and grown demographically westward since then and some people have (only semi-seriously) advocated for a move to a more central location like Winnipeg, even today the two provinces of Ontario and Quebec combined have over 60% of Canada's population, and Ottawa lies in between the country's two largest cities.