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PO Box 523, Station B,
Ottawa, ON, K1P 5P6

PO Box 523, Station B, Ottawa, ON, K1P 5P6
Let’s hear your stories about Bytown and the Rideau Canal as we begin to mark 2026, the 200th anniversary of the beginning of both! All contributions are welcome. Selected submissions will be shared on a special webpage on the HSO website for all to access, including educators. Eligible contributions can be submitted in a variety of formats, including written or audio/video. We request that submissions be received by November 30, 2025. We hope to also incorporate selected contributions into the HSO’s many other platforms – such as the HSO blog,…
The HSO’s Ben Weiss was honoured to be invited to address the 200 or so Rotary Club youth gathered in Ottawa on May 25, 2025, for the opening day of the Rotary Club’s annual Adventure in Citizenship conference. The day also included a visit to the House of Commons by the conference’s 16-18 year olds, the day before the arrival of King Charles III and the Opening of Parliament. The “Adventure in Citizenship” program was established by the Rotary Club of Ottawa in 1951.  Each year, approximately 200 senior high…
Beginning on April 2, 2025, subscribers to Rogers TV will be able to enjoy a fascinating new weekly series, “Time Travelling with the Historical Society of Ottawa”, a collaboration between Rogers TV and the HSO. Each week's new episode will air Wednesday @ 7:30 p.m. and then be rebroadcast Friday at 5:30 p.m. and the following Tuesday @ 10:00 a.m. on Rogers TV Channel 22. Here is the schedule of episodes and our featured presenters: Wednesday, April 2 @ 7:30 p.m. "Go Exploring" with Paul Weber Wednesday, April 9 @…
The Historical Society of Ottawa’s Museum Club began its 2025 season on Friday May 2nd, 2025. On that afternoon, fifteen members and guests received a private guided tour of the Bytown Fire Brigade Historical Society facility at 2880 Sheffield Road, by their President, Peter McBride. Peter kept us all enthralled and entertained for 1 ¾ hours. The Bytown Fire Brigade Historical Society was formed in the early 1980s, being incorporated as a non-profit in 1983. Its mission is to collect, preserve, conserve, restore, and display the artifacts and apparatus that…
For those with a passion for history, delving into the past becomes an exciting adventure in “Time Travelling”! These new 30-minute episodes of “Time Travelling… with the Historical of Ottawa”, recorded in collaboration between the HSO and Rogers TV, provide a phenomenal opportunity to sit back and enjoy some wonderful stories shared by more than a dozen the Ottawa area’s most engaging historians. Beginning in April 2025, a new episode was broadcast each week on Rogers TV Channel 22 (or Channel 23 in the case of the French-language episodes). And…
On the afternoon of April 26th, 2025, members of the Historical Society of Ottawa, along with many members of the general public, gathered at the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library for the presentation of the 2024 / 2025 François Bregha Storyteller awards. Following the ceremony, the large crowd, numbering some 75, settled in to listen to one of the recipients, Denise Chong, speak to us about many of the aspects of being a non-fiction writer. Denise Chong, an Order of Canada recipient, is the highly acclaimed author of…
The French version of the series “Time Travelling” will being airing on May 14, 2025 on Rogers TV 23. Timeslots will be as follows: Dominique Lajoie “Château Laurier: Si les murs pouvaient parler” – May 14, 2025 Rick Henderson “Philemon Wright et son village” – May 21, 2025 Wednesday 9:00pm (mercredi 21h) *original timeslot* Thursday 12:30pm (jeudi 12h30) Thursday 8:30pm (jeudi 20h30) Friday 4:00pm (vendredi 16h) Monday 11:00am (lundi 11h) Both shows will be available on the TV Rogers YouTube site at a later date.  
Wednesday, 23 April 2025 21:18

Ottawa’s Early Baseball History

We filled the virtual bleachers on the evening of Wednesday, April 9th, 2025 as we watched Steve Rennie start for the Historical Society of Ottawa. Steve is a baseball writer and researcher who lives in Ottawa. A former journalist, he is the president of the Ottawa-Gatineau and Eastern Ontario chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). In the spring of 2024, he presented on Ottawa’s early baseball history at the Frederick Ivor-Campbell 19th Century Base Ball Conference in Cooperstown, New York. He has a particular interest in 19th…
If you didn’t have a chance to hop aboard Black History Ottawa’s excellent bus tour last summer then grab a seat now. The Historical Society of Ottawa is proud to partner with Black History Ottawa for a virtual re-creation of the tour. The bus leaves on Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 19:00, or anytime through the link below. Our driver tonight is Jean-Marie Guerrier. Jean-Marie is a cardiology technologist at the Ottawa Heart Institute. He is a member of the Board of Flo’s Seniors Health and Care Programs Network and has…
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