This guide covers four places in Ottawa that sit side by side where the Rideau Canal meets the Ottawa River: the flight of eight locks below Parliament Hill, the Château Laurier hotel, Major's Hill Park and the National Gallery of Canada. Together they tell the story of how a military canal created a town, and how that town became a capital.
The Rideau Canal locks (Locks 1 to 8)
The Rideau Canal was built between 1826 and 1832 under Lieutenant Colonel John By of the Royal Engineers. After the War of 1812 the British feared an American invasion along the St. Lawrence River, and the canal was planned as a safe supply route between Montreal and Kingston. It was never needed for defence. The settlement that grew up around the construction camp at its northern end was called Bytown, and it later became Ottawa. In 2007 the canal was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as the best-preserved slackwater canal in North America.
In Ottawa the canal begins with its largest set of locks: eight in a single flight, lifting boats about 24 metres from the Ottawa River up to the level of the canal, in the narrow valley between the Parliament Buildings and the Château Laurier. Like most locks on the Rideau, they are still worked by hand, so in the boating season you can watch staff turn the cranks that open the gates. The locks are one of the stops on our scavenger hunt.
- The Commissariat building beside the locks, built in 1827 as the supply store and office for the canal works. It is Ottawa's oldest surviving stone building and has housed the Bytown Museum since 1917.
- In winter, when the ice is thick enough, the central section of the canal becomes the Rideau Canal Skateway, used for skating since 1971; the season depends entirely on the weather.
The Château Laurier
The Fairmont Château Laurier, the hotel with the green copper roofs above the locks, was commissioned by Charles Melville Hays, president of the Grand Trunk Railway, and built between 1909 and 1912 in a French Gothic Revival style meant to match the Parliament Buildings. It is named after Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the prime minister of the time, who helped secure the site. The grand opening was planned for April 1912, but Hays was on his way back from England for it aboard the Titanic and died when the ship sank on 15 April. The hotel opened quietly on 12 June 1912, with Laurier present.
The hotel was built together with Ottawa's Union Station across Rideau Street, and for decades it was the place where politicians, diplomats and visiting stars stayed. The portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh, who photographed Churchill, Einstein and many others, kept his studio and home here from 1972 to 1992. A large modern extension at the back was approved in 2019 after a long public debate about its design. The hotel is not one of our scavenger hunt stops, but the route passes right by it.
- The turrets, steep copper roofs and dormers, best seen from the locks below or from Major's Hill Park.
- Across Rideau Street, the former Union Station, now the Senate of Canada Building, which is linked to the hotel by a tunnel.
Major's Hill Park
Major's Hill Park covers the bluff between the Rideau Canal and Sussex Drive, above the point where the canal meets the Ottawa River. When John By lived here during the canal works it was known as Colonel's Hill. After him came Captain Daniel Bolton, who was promoted to major in 1838, and by the time he left in 1843 the place was called Major's Hill. By's house burned down in 1848, and the hill became a public park in the 1870s.
Today it is one of Ottawa's main open spaces and the centre of the city's Canada Day celebrations on 1 July, with wide lawns that look across to Parliament Hill, the river and Gatineau. The park is one of the stops on our scavenger hunt.
- The foundations of Colonel By's house, kept as a ruin with plaques about the people who lived on the hill.
- The statue of Lieutenant Colonel John By, the founder of Bytown.
The National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada was founded in 1880 by the Governor General, the Marquess of Lorne (later Duke of Argyll), at the same time as the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. After more than a century in borrowed buildings it moved in 1988 into its present home on Sussex Drive, designed by Moshe Safdie, with a long glass ramp that climbs to the Great Hall, a glass hall whose windows look straight across the river to Parliament Hill. The gallery is one of the stops on our scavenger hunt.
The collection is strongest in Canadian art, with a large group of works by Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven and paintings by Emily Carr, and it also holds major European, American and Indigenous art. Its purchase of Barnett Newman's abstract painting Voice of Fire in 1990 caused a national row about how public money should be spent on art.
- Maman, Louise Bourgeois's giant bronze spider, on the plaza in front of the entrance, acquired in 1999.
- The Rideau Street Chapel, the complete interior of a 19th-century convent chapel, saved when its convent was demolished and rebuilt inside the gallery in 1988.
- Tom Thomson's paintings of the northern Ontario wilderness, which shaped how Canadians picture their landscape.
How to see them in one walk
Start at the bottom of the locks beside the Commissariat building and the Bytown Museum, and climb up alongside the eight locks to the street bridge at the top. Cross it to the front of the Château Laurier and walk behind the hotel into Major's Hill Park. Walk past the ruins of Colonel By's house to his statue and the viewpoint over the river, and come out on Sussex Drive at the National Gallery of Canada, with Maman on the plaza. The Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica is just across the street, and the Royal Canadian Mint is a little further along Sussex Drive.
See Ottawa with World City Trail
Our Ottawa scavenger hunt turns the city centre into a game you play on your phone. The route links 10 stops, from Parliament Hill to the statue of Samuel de Champlain, and the Rideau Canal locks, Major's Hill Park and the National Gallery are all stops, along with the Centennial Flame, the National War Memorial, the Famous Five monument, the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica and the Royal Canadian Mint. At each stop you solve a puzzle and learn a story, at your own pace.
There is also a self-guided walking tour and an outdoor escape game in Ottawa, for people who prefer a different format.
Play the Ottawa scavenger hunt →
Take the self-guided walking tour of Ottawa →
Play the outdoor escape game in Ottawa →
Facts checked in October 2026.