Ottawa

Community Organizations:

Comunidade da Paróquia do Senhor Santo Cristo – Lusitânia Portuguese Recreation Centre of Ottawa-Hull

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OTTAWA’S POPULATION: 1,393,000

STATISTICS FOR THE PORTUGUESE COMMUNITY IN OTTAWA:

AS MOTHER TONGUE	AS MOST SPOKEN	KNOWLEDGE OF THE LANGUAGE	BORN IN PORTUGAL	ETHNIC ORIGIN
4,290 0.3% of population	1,865 0.1% of population	6,250 0.4% of population	2,010 0.1% of population	9,555 0.7% of population

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Ottawa has been Canada’s capital since 1857, after Queen Victoria moved the parliament from Kingston. However, it took the locality a couple of centuries since the arrival of the Europeans in Ontario for it to become a sizeable city. It was Philemon Wright, in 1800, who decided to establish a community here after he discovered that the Ottawa River provided the perfect channel for the transportation of lumber to Montreal. This provoked a large influx of French-speaking settlers but the war of 1812 brought many Irish to the region, making Ottawa a truly multicultural city.

The Rideau Canal, completed in 1832, further advanced Ottawa’s economy and significantly enlarged its population. The canal connected the locality to Kingston and the St. Lawrence River, which granted it direct access to the Five Great Lakes. This occurrence became the single most important point in Ottawa’s history for it paved the way for the city to gain the importance it holds today. Ottawa quickly became the most important centre for the distribution of lumber in Canada and one of the largest in the whole of North America.

The choice of Ottawa by Queen Victoria is filled with many tales. Some claim that she threw a hairpin onto the map and that it landed in Ottawa; others say that she liked the colours of the region’s landscape. The reality is that Ottawa was chosen purely for political reasons: it lay on the border of Ontario and Quebec, the two main parts of Canada at the time. This way, the Queen avoided political turmoil had she picked between York (now Toronto) and Montreal, the two largest cities in the country. Ottawa was also far from the main waterways that connected Canada to the United States, making it a safe location to harbour the government.

Following in the footsteps of other large cities such as Toronto, in 2001 Ottawa joined Nepean, Carlton, Gloucester, Rockliffe Park, Vanier, Cumberland, West Carleton, Osgoode, Rideau and Goulbourn to form the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton.

The Portuguese gravitated to the area shortly after the first contingent of immigrants arrived in Canada aboard the Saturnia, on May 13, 1953. They quickly formed a soccer team and, in 1963, it naturally evolved into one of the oldest Portuguese community organizations in Canada when Lusitânia Portuguese Recreation Centre of Ottawa-Hull was founded. For many years, soccer was the only activity but, over the years, the association turned into the major cultural and social reference for the Portuguese community residing in the Capital’s region.

The population spread across the river to Gatineau, Quebec, which gave rise to another association. Although not technically located in Ontario, the community grew from Ottawa and became, therefore, forever attached to the community that had settled in the Capital. In 1975, a sizeable number of Portuguese immigrants had moved to Gatineau, giving rise to the formation of Centro Comunitário Português Amigos Unidos (please find this association under Quebec). This organization evolved substantially, forming cultural, religious, social and sporting groups that have left a lasting mark in the local community.

The formation of the association in Gatineau offered the community different options and, in 1988, the Portuguese residing in the Ottawa regions were awarded with the founding of Comunidade da Paróquia do Senhor Santo Cristo. While this meant that there were different choices available to the community, it also meant that the three organizations were further put under pressure to maintain a healthy membership.

The above, added to the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, have certainly had an impact but each organization has shown the necessary resilience to preserve its mission and the commitment to the community that resides in the Ottawa region.

With files from Luso-Ontario Magazine, 2008

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