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

PO Box 523, Station B, Ottawa, ON, K1P 5P6
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…
Sunday, 30 March 2025 17:15

The Bells of the Peace Tower

We began our speaker session of March 22, 2025 at the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library on a somber note as Ben Weiss informed us of  the unexpected death of Jamie Bramburger who had been our guest speaker just one month earlier. All of us at the Historical Society of Ottawa extend our condolences to Jamie’s family, friends and colleagues. As March 7, 2025 marked the 225th anniversary of the arrival of Philemon Wright and his party to this area, we were pleased to welcome Rick Henderson, a…
Sunday, 30 March 2025 17:05

The 1942 Almonte Train Wreck

The weather on that evening, Sunday, December 27th 1942 was miserable. The Ottawa Valley was hit with a mix of snow, sleet, and freezing rain as the local 550 train made its way from Petawawa toward Ottawa. Mist rising from the rivers and the blackout, necessitated by the war added to the darkness. By contrast, it was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, February 22nd, 2025 when almost 60 of us gathered at the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library to hear Jamie Bramburger relate the tragic story of the wreck…
On the evening of Wednesday, October 9, 2024, the Historical Society of Ottawa delved into its own past with an exploration of the early decades of the Women’s Canadian Historical Society of Ottawa (WCHSO) and the remarkable women who formed and ran it. We were pleased to again welcome Connie Wren-Gunn, who reprised the session she had presented at our 125th Birthday Bash in the summer of 2023. Connie is a professional historian, being the Director, Content & Interpretative Products for Know History. She holds an M.A. in History from…
Wednesday, 19 February 2025 21:40

Heritage Day 2025

The HSO team was happy to attend Ottawa’s Heritage Day celebrations at City Hall on February 18, 2025.
It’s quiz time! Again this year, the Historical Society of Ottawa had the honour of preparing the 2025 “Great Ottawa History Challenge”, published every February during Heritage Week in the Ottawa Citizen. Here’s your chance to see how much you know about Ottawa’s past: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/ottawa-history-quiz
Wednesday, 08 January 2025 08:09

Happy Anniversary HSO Blog!

The HSO Blog has been live for a year! We launched this platform as an extension of our objective to preserve and increase public knowledge of the history of Ottawa, including its people and places. Our vision was to create a space where the history of the Ottawa area could be shared through an engaging blog platform. Thank you to all who have contributed and shared their interest in the blog! Be sure to catch up on past posts and other great HSO publications found under the publications section of…
Monday, 09 December 2024 17:34

Ottawa U Scrapbooking Ottawa History

On the morning of December 2nd, 2024, eight members of the Historical Society of Ottawa attended the final presentation of the HIS4135 Canadian Digital History Course at the University of Ottawa, The class had taken on the project of digitizing several of the scrapbooks created by our founders, the Women’s Canadian Historical Society of Ottawa, (WCHSO), during the first half of the 20th Century. The students would then conduct some analysis of the contents of the scrapbooks. Their professor, Sarah Templier, explained that this project had been intended for a…
Saturday, 23 November 2024 23:12

Touring the National Research Council

Our final Museum Club outing for 2024 took place on the morning of Wednesday, November 20, and was a private tour of the National Research Council of Canada’s facility at 100 Sussex Drive. Thirteen of our members were greeted by Steven LeClair, Chief Archivist of the NRC. We were surprised to learn that apart from Library and Archives Canada, the NRC is the only federal agency that is permitted to operate an archive. All others must send their documents and artifacts to the LAC, but due to the need for…
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