Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
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.
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When Ottawa was chosen, it was serving only the united provinces of Canada East (Quebec) and Canada West (Ontario). When the decision was made, it was very central on the boundary line between the two. Winnipeg was not even a thought in the 1850s, being not much more than the wilderness village of Fort Garry and not being part of Canada at the time. This was still controlled by the British Hudson's Bay Company, a completely separate entity until after Confederation when Britain finally decided to divest that huge territory to Canada.