Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
Ottawa is kind of like a movie set. There's that NCC circle formed by Wellington St., Laurier St. in Gatineau and then Mackenzie/Sussex plus Confederation square. That looks suitably grand for TV.
You go one block away, though, and it looks like a standard Canadian mid-sized city.
That's okay, though. Ottawa is, at best, the fourth most important city in a medium-sized country. It's also a metro of just over a million on a continent where similar-sized cities tend to be pretty middling (big exception: New Orleans).
There's also some "grandeur" in the form of scenic, manicured parkways and drives in the suburbs, which was the 20th century response to creating a showcase capital.
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Not sure how it will be received on here, but beyond the respective "parliamentaty precincts" (where Ottawa wins), among Canadian capitals I find Quebec City arguably as much or even more capital-esque grandeur as Ottawa does.
In both cases it's admittedly a work in progress, but even on that front there seems to be more work going on in Quebec City than in Ottawa. (Unless people want to count LRT as capital-esque grandeur.)