Ottawa Bluesfest
Ottawa Bluesfest is an annual outdoor music festival that takes place each July in downtown Ottawa, Canada. While the festival's lineup focused on blues music at its inception, it has showcased mainstream pop and rock acts in recent years. Bluesfest has become the second largest in North America. Since its inception, the festival has been managed by executive and artistic director Mark Monahan; the organization manages CityFolk Festival and the Ontario Festival of Small Halls. In 2002, Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest won the Best Event Award from the Ottawa Tourism and Convention Authority and in 2003 the organization received the Keeping the Blues Alive award for arts education from the Memphis Blues Foundation. Mark Monahan is a past recipient of the Toronto Blues Society's Blues with a Feeling award. In December 2011, Bluesfest reached a five-year sponsorship deal with RBC Royal Bank to ensure its financial stability. Henceforth, the event will be known as RBC Bluesfest; the festival was first held in 1994 at Majors Hill Park with the performance of Clarence Clemons, attracting 5,000 spectators.
The following year the festival attracted larger crowds with entertainers like John Hiatt and Buddy Guy. In 1996, 25,000 fans attended Bluesfest to see Los Lobos and others, it was that the Mitel corporation became the first major sponsor of the event. In 1997, the festival was moved to Confederation Park to provide more space for the increasing number of fans to see musicians such as Dr. John and Little Feat. In 1998, over 80,000 people showed up for the festival. Bell Mobility and CIBC Wood Gundy joined the list of sponsors. In 1999, the festival was moved to LeBreton Flats. Bluesfest became a registered charitable organization while attracting over 95,000 fans; the Royal Canadian Mint became a sponsor. Cisco Systems became the Bluesfest Title Sponsor in 2001, while the Ottawa Citizen and the National Post became Presenting Sponsors. In 2002, Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest moved to Festival Plaza in 200,000 fans. In 2003, the festival expanded to eight stages to celebrate its tenth anniversary with 220,000 people in attendance.
2005 saw the festival further diversify its offerings, reaching out to a younger audience as well as those interested in more than just blues. The 2006 edition saw continued growth with increased crowds and the move of the MBNA stage to Lisgar Collegiate Institute to provide more capacity. In 2007, Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest relocated to LeBreton Flats Park, a move from the site at Festival Plaza the previous year; the new site offered five stages around the Canadian War Museum. The stage set-up featured twin main stages akin to the Austin City Limits Music Festival, which allowed audiences to transfer between headlining acts; the festival continues to be held in July annually for 9–12 days. Headliners such as B. B King and the Dixie Chicks, Blake Shelton and Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters attracting 300,000 attendees each year. Along with showcasing international musical talent, Bluesfest is a non-profit charitable organization with year-round music education initiatives such as Blues in the Schools, Be in the Band, the Bluesfest School of Music and Art, augmenting a focus on developing local artists in the Ottawa region.
On July 17, 2011, just 20 minutes into Cheap Trick’s set, a thunderstorm blew through the festival area. The band and crew narrowly escaped the collapse of the stage's 50-ton roof, it fell away from the audience and landed on the band's truck, parked alongside the back of the stage, breaking the fall and allowing everyone about 30 seconds to escape. Robin Zander was released from hospital the same day. During preparations for the 2018 festival, a pair of killdeer was found nesting on some cobblestones, which help camouflage the eggs, it was right. Killdeer and their nesting grounds are protected under the Migratory Birds Convention Act. With permission from Environment and Climate Change Canada, help from the Woodlands Wildlife Sanctuary, the nest was moved 25 meters, one meter at a time, to a protected area behind the stage site, stage construction was allowed to continue after a 12-hour delay, it marked a first for successful killdeer nest relocation. List of festivals in Ottawa List of festivals in Canada Music of Canada List of blues festivals List of folk festivals RBC Bluesfest official website Ottawa Festivals website
Lock (water navigation)
A lock is a device used for raising and lowering boats and other watercraft between stretches of water of different levels on river and canal waterways. The distinguishing feature of a lock is a fixed chamber. Locks are used to make a river more navigable, or to allow a canal to cross land, not level. Canals used more and larger locks to allow a more direct route to be taken. Since 2016, the largest lock worldwide is the Kieldrecht Lock in the Port of Belgium. A pound lock is a type of lock, used exclusively nowadays on canals and rivers. A pound lock has a chamber with gates at both ends. In contrast, an earlier design with a single gate was known as a flash lock. Pound locks were first used in medieval China during the Song Dynasty, having been pioneered by the Song politician and naval engineer Qiao Weiyue in 984, they replaced earlier double slipways that had caused trouble and are mentioned by the Chinese polymath Shen Kuo in his book Dream Pool Essays, described in the Chinese historical text Song Shi: The distance between the two locks was rather more than 50 paces, the whole space was covered with a great roof like a shed.
The gates were'hanging gates'. The water level could differ by 4 feet or 5 feet at each lock and in the Grand Canal the level was raised in this way by 138 feet. In medieval Europe a sort of pound lock was built in 1373 at Netherlands; this pound lock serviced many ships at once in a large basin. Yet the first true pound lock was built in 1396 at Damme near Belgium; the Italian Bertola da Novate constructed 18 pound locks on the Naviglio di Bereguardo between 1452 and 1458. When a stretch of river is made navigable, a lock is sometimes required to bypass an obstruction such as a rapid, dam, or mill weir – because of the change in river level across the obstacle. In large scale river navigation improvements and locks are used together. A weir will increase the depth of a shallow stretch, the required lock will either be built in a gap in the weir, or at the downstream end of an artificial cut which bypasses the weir and a shallow stretch of river below it. A river improved by these means is called a Waterway or River Navigation.
Sometimes a river is made non-tidal by constructing a sea lock directly into the estuary. In more advanced river navigations, more locks are required. Where a longer cut bypasses a circuitous stretch of river, the upstream end of the cut will be protected by a flood lock; the longer the cut, the greater the difference in river level between start and end of the cut, so that a long cut will need additional locks along its length. At this point, the cut is, in effect, a canal. Early artificial canals, across flat countryside, would get round a small hill or depression by detouring around it; as engineers became more ambitious in the types of country they felt they could overcome, locks became essential to effect the necessary changes in water level without detours that would be uneconomic both in building costs and journey time. Still, as construction techniques improved, engineers became more willing to cut directly through and across obstacles by constructing long tunnels, aqueducts or embankments, or to construct more technical devices such as inclined planes or boat lifts.
However, locks continued to be built to supplement these solutions, are an essential part of the most modern navigable waterways. All pound locks have three elements: A watertight chamber connecting the upper and lower canals, large enough to enclose one or more boats; the position of the chamber is fixed. A gate at each end of the chamber. A gate is opened to allow a boat to leave the chamber. A set of lock gear to fill the chamber as required; this is a simple valve which allows water to drain into or out of the chamber. The principle of operating a lock is simple. For instance, if a boat travelling downstream finds the lock full of water: The entrance gates are opened and the boat moves in; the entrance gates are closed. A valve is opened, this lowers the boat by draining water from the chamber; the exit gates are opened and the boat moves out. If the lock were empty, the boat would have had to wait 5 to 10 minutes. For a boat travelling upstream, the process is reversed; the whole operation will take between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on the size of the lock and whether the water in the lock was set at the boat's level.
Boaters approaching a lock are pleased to meet another boat coming towards them, because this boat will have just exited the lock on their level and therefore set the lock in their favour – saving about 5 to 10 minutes. However, this is not true for staircase locks, where it is quicker for boats to go through
Britannia, Ottawa
Britannia is a group of neighbourhoods in Bay Ward in the west end of Ottawa, Canada. It is located on the Ottawa River across from Aylmer, adjacent to its namesake, Britannia Bay, north of Carling Avenue and west of the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway; the area constituted a municipal ward from 1973 to 1994. The area has a mix of high income housing; the lower income areas of the area are closer to Richmond Road in the south, the more affluent areas are located in the community of Britannia Village in the north, which includes the Britannia Yacht Club at the north end of Britannia Road. The total population of the area was 8,355 as of the 2011 census. Many of Britannia's old cottages live on as bungalows. Surrounded by water and hills; the Ottawa River Pathway is a long segment of Capital Pathway along the south bank of the entire length Ottawa's portion of the Ottawa River. A bike path extends from Britannia some 12 kilometers to the Parliament buildings downtown. Today, there is no neighbourhood in Ottawa more mixed than Britannia forming a contrast with many of the homogenized satellite communities that have become Ottawa.
This land where Britannia stands was once a part of a large estate, owned by Captain John LeBreton in 1818. John LeBreton advertised the sale of real estate in the village area in 1828. LCol Joseph Bouchette referred to Lac Deschênes as Chaudiere Lake in 1832. Around 1876, an apple orchard near the head of the rapids was undermined and washed away during a big flood; the Britannia Methodist Church formed in 1873 and celebrated its 140th anniversary in 2013. The Church grew out of services held in the home of Ira Honeywell, the first settler in Nepean Township. Members had been meeting in homes since 1869. In 1911, the Neogothic Britannia Heights Methodist Church was erected at Richmond. Renamed the Britannia United Church in 1920 after the amalgamation of the United Church of Canada. After her congregation moved to Britannia United on Pinecrest Road in 1961, the building was used to sell Macintosh & Watts china, to sell paintings and as a construction shack until it burned down in 1975, it was once a small mill owned by Mr John Jamieson to the west of Ottawa.
A cottage town and boating club developed around the site of the old mill. The Britannia Yacht Club was established in 1887; the Club house still retains its historic appearance. Members of the club have won Olympic gold medals. Canada's only Gold medal winner from the 1936 Summer Olympics, Frank Amyot, paddled these waters in the 1920s and 1930s; the Club's Dragon Lounge's bar was fashioned out of a dragon sail boat. The Clubhouse was included amongst other architecturally interesting and significant buildings in Doors Open Ottawa, held June 2 and 3, 2012; the Britannia Bay post office was established in 1889, under the community's first postmistress Mrs C Hand. The "G. B. Greene", known as'Queen of the River,' a double-decked side wheeler steamer built by the Upper Ottawa Improvement Company in 1896, took up to 250 passengers up the Ottawa River to Chats Falls on daily pleasure excursions. Although she was dismantled in 1946, her anchor remains at Britannia Beach today. In 1899, the Ottawa Electric Railway Company built a street-car line to Britannia.
In 1899, the Metropolitan Power Company was formed to construct a power house just north of the Britannia Boathouse Club with a 2000-foot canal to extend to the lower end of the Lac Deschênes Rapids. The area became popular at the turn of the century because the Ottawa Gas and Electric company extended the trolley line and created an amusement park at Britannia beach to encourage users of the trolley system to use the system on weekends. A cottage and beach community resulted; the first trip of the Ottawa Electric Railway Car 202 Britannia-on-the-Bay on the Britannia Line was 13 January 1900. The electric line to the village on Britannia Bay was open for regular traffic in the spring 1900. By 1904, the trolley company had built a wide pier 1,000 feet long out into the river. Along the east side, there were cottages, the Boat club house. Along the south side, the land between the road and the lake has been turned into a park, with pavilions and bath houses; the beach was ideal for bathing, since people could wade out to the end of the pier without danger.
The village, with its two churches and neat cottages, was one of Ottawa's most fashionable suburbs in 1904. Justice Mosgrove had a 35-acre grape farm, not far from Britannia Park, on the river. Albert Bedingfield's stencil designs, now in the Library and Archives Canada collection, were published by Britannia-Bay, Ont. During World War I, men were encouraged to join the 207th CEF at the Britannia Pier. During World War II, the Princess Alice Barracks Cabin at Britannia Bay provided a summer home for Royal Canadian Air Force personnel near the Britannia Boating Club's facilities for tennis and boating. Rented from the King's Daughter's Guild of Ottawa, the cabin featured 60 beds, a separate cookhouse and dining pavilion; the cabin had served the King's Daughter's Guild of Ottawa since 1913 as a Fresh Air Cottage for mothers and undernourished children. After the war, the Fresh Air Cottages were rented to families as year round apartments. During a kitchen fire at the Fresh Air Cottage on Dec 11, 1952, Roger Murphy, aged 2 died and 26 residents were left temporarily homeless.
The Fresh Air Cottage on Cassels Street, was expropriated and demolished, is now part of the conservation area around Mud Lake. Rapid growth in all directions during the 20th century meant that it was soon surrounded by the w
Government of Canada
The Government of Canada Her Majesty's Government, is the federal administration of Canada. In Canadian English, the term can mean either the collective set of institutions or the Queen-in-Council. In both senses, the current construct was established at Confederation through the Constitution Act, 1867—as a federal constitutional monarchy, wherein the Canadian Crown acts as the core, or "the most basic building block", of its Westminster-style parliamentary democracy; the Crown is thus the foundation of the executive and judicial branches of the Canadian government. Further elements of governance are outlined in the rest of the Canadian Constitution, which includes written statutes, court rulings, unwritten conventions developed over centuries; the monarch is represented by the Governor General of Canada. The Queen's Privy Council for Canada is the body that advises the sovereign or viceroy on the exercise of executive power. However, in practice, that task is performed only by the Cabinet, a committee within the Privy Council composed of ministers of the Crown, who are drawn from and responsible to the elected House of Commons in parliament.
The Cabinet is headed by the prime minister, appointed by the governor general after securing the confidence of the House of Commons. In Canadian English, the word government is used to refer both to the whole set of institutions that govern the country, to the current political leadership. In federal department press releases, the government has sometimes been referred to by the phrase Government. In late 2010, an informal instruction from the Office of the Prime Minister urged government departments to use in all department communications the term in place of Government of Canada; the same cabinet earlier directed its press department to use the phrase Canada's New Government. As per the Constitution Acts of 1867 and 1982, Canada is a constitutional monarchy, wherein the role of the reigning sovereign is both legal and practical, but not political; the Crown is regarded as a corporation sole, with the monarch, vested as she is with all powers of state, at the centre of a construct in which the power of the whole is shared by multiple institutions of government acting under the sovereign's authority.
The executive is thus formally called the Queen-in-Council, the legislature the Queen-in-Parliament, the courts as the Queen on the Bench. Royal Assent is required to enact laws and, as part of the Royal Prerogative, the royal sign-manual gives authority to letters patent and orders in council, though the authority for these acts stems from the Canadian populace and, within the conventional stipulations of constitutional monarchy, the sovereign's direct participation in any of these areas of governance is limited; the Royal Prerogative includes summoning and dissolving parliament in order to call an election, extends to foreign affairs: the negotiation and ratification of treaties, international agreements, declarations of war. The person, monarch of Canada is the monarch of 15 other countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, though, he or she reigns separately as King or Queen of Canada, an office, "truly Canadian" and "totally independent from that of the Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms".
On the advice of the Canadian Prime Minister, the sovereign appoints a federal viceregal representative—the Governor General of Canada —who, since 1947, is permitted to exercise all of the monarch's Royal Prerogative, though there are some duties which must be performed by, or bills that require assent by, the king or queen. The government is defined by the constitution as the Queen acting on the advice of her privy council. However, the Privy Council—consisting of former members of parliament, chief justices of the supreme court, other elder statesmen—rarely meets in full; as the stipulations of responsible government require that those who directly advise the monarch and governor general on how to exercise the Royal Prerogative be accountable to the elected House of Commons, the day-to-day operation of government is guided only by a sub-group of the Privy Council made up of individuals who hold seats in parliament. This body of senior ministers of the Crown is the Cabinet. One of the main duties of the Crown is to ensure that a democratic government is always in place, which means appointing a prime minister to thereafter head the Cabinet.
Thus, the governor general must appoint as prime minister the person who holds the confidence of the House of Commons. Should no party hold a majority in the commons, the leader of one party—either the one with the most seats or one supported by other parties—will be called by the governor general to form a minority government. Once sworn in by the viceroy, the prime minister holds office until he or she resigns or is removed by the governor general, after either a motion of no confidence or his or her party's defeat in a general election; the monarch and governor general follow the near-binding advice of
Ottawa River
The Ottawa River is a river in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. For most of its length, it defines the border between these two provinces, it is a major tributary of the St. Lawrence River; the river rises at Lac des Outaouais, north of the Laurentian Mountains of central Quebec, flows west to Lake Timiskaming. From there its route has been used to define the interprovincial border with Ontario; the river reaches great depths of nearly 460 feet in some places. From Lake Timiskaming, the river flows southeast to Ottawa and Gatineau, where it tumbles over Chaudière Falls and further takes in the Rideau and Gatineau rivers; the Ottawa River drains into the Lake of the St. Lawrence River at Montreal; the river is 1,271 kilometres long. The average annual mean waterflow measured at Carillon dam, near the Lake of Two Mountains, is 1,939 cubic metres per second, with average annual extremes of 749 to 5,351 cubic metres per second. Record historic levels since 1964 are a low of 529 cubic metres per second in 2005 and a high of 8,190 cubic metres per second in 1976.
The river flows through large areas of deciduous and coniferous forest formed over thousands of years as trees recolonized the Ottawa Valley after the ice age. The coniferous forests and blueberry bogs occur on old sand plains left by retreating glaciers, or in wetter areas with clay substrate; the deciduous forests, dominated by birch, beech and ash occur in more mesic areas with better soil around the boundary with the La Varendrye Park. These primeval forests were affected by natural fire started by lightning, which led to increased reproduction by pine and oak, as well as fire barrens and their associated species; the vast areas of pine were exploited by early loggers. Generations of logging removed hemlock for use in tanning leather, leaving a permanent deficit of hemlock in most forests. Associated with the logging and early settlement were vast wild fires which not only removed the forests, but led to soil erosion. Nearly all the forests show varying degrees of human disturbance. Tracts of older forest are uncommon, hence they are considered of considerable importance for conservation.
The Ottawa River has large areas of wetlands. Some of the more biologically important wetland areas include, the Westmeath sand dune/wetland complex, Mississippi Snye, Breckenridge Nature Reserve, Shirleys Bay, Ottawa Beach/Andrew Haydon Park, Petrie Island, the Duck Islands and Greens Creek; the Westmeath sand dune/wetland complex is significant for its pristine sand dunes, few of which remain along the Ottawa River, the many associated rare plants. Shirleys Bay has a biologically diverse shoreline alvar, as well as one of the largest silver maple swamps along the river. Like all wetlands, these depend upon the seasonal fluctuations in the water level. High water levels help create and maintain silver maple swamps, while low water periods allow many rare wetland plants to grow on the emerged sand and clay flats. There are five principal wetland vegetation types. One is swamp silver maple. There are four herbaceous vegetation types, named for the dominant plant species in them: Scirpus, Eleocharis and Typha.
Which type occurs in a particular location depends upon factors such as substrate type, water depth, ice-scour and fertility. Inland, south of the river, older river channels, which date back to the end of the ice age, no longer have flowing water, have sometimes filled with a different wetland type, peat bog. Examples include Alfred Bog. Major tributaries include: Communities along the Ottawa River include: The Ottawa River lies in the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben, a Mesozoic rift valley that formed 175 million years ago. Much of the river flows through the Canadian Shield, although lower areas flow through limestone plains and glacial deposits; as the glacial ice sheet began to retreat at the end of the last ice age, the Ottawa River valley, along with the St. Lawrence River valley and Lake Champlain, had been depressed to below sea level by the glacier's weight, filled with sea water; the resulting arm of the ocean is known as the Champlain Sea. Fossil remains of marine life dating 12 to 10 thousand years ago have been found in marine clay throughout the region.
Sand deposits from this era have produced vast plains dominated by pine forests, as well as localized areas of sand dunes, such as Westmeath and Constance Bay. Clay deposits from this period have resulted in areas of poor drainage, large swamps, peat bogs in some ancient channels of this river. Hence, the distribution of forests and wetlands is much a product of these past glacial events. Large deposits of a material known as Leda clay formed; these deposits become unstable after heavy rains. Numerous landslides have occurred as a result; the former site of the town of Lemieux, Ontario collapsed into the South Nation River in 1993. The town's residents had been relocated because of the suspected instability of the earth in that location; as the land rose again the sea coast retreated and the fresh water courses of today took shape. Following the demise of the Champlain Sea the Ottawa River Valley continued to drain the waters of the emerging Upper Great Lakes basin through Lake Nipissing and the Mattawa River.
Owing to the ongoing uplift of the la
Parliament Hill
Parliament Hill, colloquially known as The Hill, is an area of Crown land on the southern banks of the Ottawa River in downtown Ottawa, Canada. Its Gothic revival suite of buildings is the home of the Parliament of Canada and has architectural elements of national symbolic importance. Parliament Hill attracts 3 million visitors each year. Law enforcement on Parliament Hill and in the parliamentary precinct is the responsibility of the Parliamentary Protective Service; the site of a military base in the 18th and early 19th centuries, development of the area into a governmental precinct began in 1859, after Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the capital of the Province of Canada. Following a number of extensions to the parliament and departmental buildings and a fire in 1916 that destroyed the Centre Block, Parliament Hill took on its present form with the completion of the Peace Tower in 1927. Since 2002, an extensive $1 billion renovation and rehabilitation project has been underway throughout all of the precinct's buildings.
Parliament Hill is a limestone outcrop with a sloping top, covered in primeval forest of beech and hemlock. For hundreds of years, the hill served as a landmark on the Ottawa River for First Nations and European traders and industrialists, to mark their journey to the interior of the continent. After Ottawa—then called Bytown—was founded, the builders of the Rideau Canal used the hill as a location for a military base, naming it Barrack Hill. A large fortress was planned for the site, but was never built, by the mid 19th century the hill had lost its strategic importance. In 1858, Queen Victoria selected Ottawa as the capital of the Province of Canada, Barrack Hill was chosen as the site for the new parliament buildings, given its prominence over both the town and the river, as well as the fact that it was owned by the Crown. On 7 May, the Department of Public Works issued a call for design proposals for the new parliament buildings to be erected on Barrack Hill, answered with 298 submitted drawings.
After the entries were narrowed down to three, Governor General Sir Edmund Walker Head was approached to break the stalemate, the winners were announced on August 29, 1859. The Centre Block, departmental buildings, a new residence for the governor general were each awarded separately, the team of Thomas Fuller and Chilion Jones, under the pseudonym of Semper Paratus, winning the prize for the first category with their Victorian High Gothic scheme of a formal, symmetrical front facing a quadrangle, a more rustic, picturesque back facing the escarpment overlooking the Ottawa River; the team of Thomas Stent and Augustus Laver, under the pseudonym of Stat nomen in umbra, won the prize for the second category, which included the East and West Blocks. These proposals were selected for their sophisticated use of Gothic architecture, thought to remind people of parliamentary democracy's history, would contradict the republican Neoclassicism of the United States' capital, would be suited to the rugged surroundings while being stately.
$300,000 was allocated for the main building, $120,000 for each of the departmental buildings. Ground was broken on December 20, 1859, the first stones laid on April 16 of the following year, Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, laid the cornerstone of the Centre Block on September 1; the construction of Parliament Hill became the largest project undertaken in North America to that date. However, workers hit bedrock earlier than expected, necessitating blasting in order to complete the foundations, altered by the architects in order to sit 5.25 metres deeper than planned. By early 1861, Public Works reported that $1,424,882.55 had been spent on the venture, leading to the site being closed in September and the unfinished structures covered in tarpaulins until 1863, when construction resumed following a commission of inquiry. Two years the unfinished site hosted a celebration of Queen Victoria's birthday, further cementing the area's position as the central place for national outpouring; the site was still incomplete when three of the British North American colonies entered Confederation in 1867, with Ottawa remaining the capital of the new country.
Within four years Manitoba, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, the North-West Territories were added and, along with the associated bureaucracy, the first three required representation be added in parliament. Thus, the offices of parliament spread to buildings beyond Parliament Hill at that early date; the British military gave a nine-pound naval cannon to the British army garrison stationed in Ottawa in 1854. It was purchased by the Canadian government in 1869 and fired on Parliament Hill for many years as the "Noonday Gun". By 1876, the structures of Parliament Hill were finished, along with the surrounding fence and gates. However, the grounds had yet to be properly designed. Vaux completed a layout for the landscape of Parliament Hill, including the present day driveways and main lawn, while Scott created the more informal grounds to the sides of and behind the buildings. In 1901 they were the site of both mourning for, celebration of, Queen Victoria, when the Queen's death was mourned in official ceremonies in January of that year, when, in late September, Victoria's grandson, Pr
Ottawa Senators
The Ottawa Senators are a professional ice hockey team based in Ottawa, Ontario. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League; the Senators play their home games at the 17,373-seat Canadian Tire Centre, which opened in 1996 as the Palladium. Founded and established by Ottawa real estate developer Bruce Firestone, the team is the second NHL franchise to use the Ottawa Senators name; the original Ottawa Senators, founded in 1883, had a famed history, winning 11 Stanley Cups, playing in the NHL from 1917 until 1934. On December 6, 1990, after a two-year public campaign by Firestone, the NHL awarded a new franchise, which began play in the 1992–93 season; the current team owner is Eugene Melnyk, in 2018, the franchise was valued by Forbes magazine at $435 million. The Senators have won four division titles and, in the Presidents' Trophy. Ottawa had been home to the original Senators, a founding NHL franchise and 11-time Stanley Cup champions. After the NHL expanded to the United States in the late 1920s, the original Senators' eventual financial losses forced the franchise to move to St. Louis in 1934 operating as the Eagles while a Senators senior amateur team took over the Senators' place in Ottawa.
The NHL team was unsuccessful in St. Louis and planned to return to Ottawa, but the NHL decided instead to suspend the franchise and transfer the players to other NHL teams. Fifty-four years after the NHL announced plans to expand, Ottawa real estate developer Bruce Firestone decided along with colleagues Cyril Leeder and Randy Sexton that Ottawa was now able to support an NHL franchise, the group proceeded to put a bid together, his firm, Terrace Investments, did not have the liquid assets to finance the expansion fee and the team, but the group conceived a strategy to leverage a land development. In 1989, after finding a suitable site on farmland just west of Ottawa in Kanata on which to construct a new arena, Terrace announced its intention to win a franchise and launched a successful "Bring Back the Senators" campaign to both woo the public and persuade the NHL that the city could support an NHL franchise. Public support was high and the group would secure over 11,000 season ticket pledges.
On December 12, 1990, the NHL approved a new franchise for Firestone's group, to start play in the 1992–93 season. The new team hired former NHL player Mel Bridgman, who had no previous NHL management experience, as its first general manager in 1992; the team was interested in hiring former Jack Adams Award winner Brian Sutter as its first head coach, but Sutter came with a high price tag and was reluctant to be a part of an expansion team. When Sutter was signed to coach the Boston Bruins, Ottawa signed Rick Bowness, the man Sutter replaced in Boston; the new Senators were placed in the Adams Division of the Wales Conference, played their first game on October 8, 1992, in the Ottawa Civic Centre against the Montreal Canadiens with lots of pre-game spectacle. The Senators defeated the Canadiens 5–3 in one of the few highlights that season. Following the initial excitement of the opening night victory, the club floundered badly and tied the San Jose Sharks for the worst record in the league, winning only 10 games with 70 losses and four ties for 24 points, three points better than the NHL record for futility.
The Senators had aimed low and considered the 1992–93 season a small success, as Firestone had set a goal for the season of not setting a new NHL record for fewest points in a season. The long-term plan was to finish low in the standings for its first few years in order to secure high draft picks and contend for the Stanley Cup. Bridgman was fired after one season and Team President Randy Sexton took over the general manager duties. Firestone himself soon left Rod Bryden emerged as the new owner; the strategy of aiming low and securing a high draft position did not change. The Senators finished last overall for the next three seasons. For the 1993–94 season, the team now played in the Eastern Conference's Northeast Division. Although 1993 first overall draft choice Alexandre Daigle wound up being one of the greatest draft busts in NHL history, they chose Radek Bonk in 1994, Bryan Berard in 1995, Chris Phillips in 1996 and Marian Hossa in 1997, all of whom would become solid NHL players and formed a strong core of players in years to come.
Alexei Yashin, the team's first-ever draft selection from 1992, emerged as one of the NHL's brightest young stars. The team traded many of their better veteran players of the era, including 1992–93 leading scorer Norm Maciver and fan favourites Mike Peluso and Bob Kudelski in an effort to stockpile prospects and draft picks; as the 1995–96 season began, star centre Alexei Yashin refused to honour his contract and did not play. In December, after three straight last-place finishes and a team, ridiculed throughout the league, fans began to grow restless waiting for the team's long-term plan to yield results, arena attendance began to decline. Rick Bowness was fired in late 1995 and was replaced by the Prince Edward Island Senators' head coach Dave Allison. Allison would fare no better than his predecessor, the team would stumble to a 2–22–3 record under him. Sexton himself was replaced by Pierre Gauthier, the former assistant GM of Anaheim. Before the end of January 1996, Gauthier had resolved the team's most pressing issues by settling star player Alexei Yashin's contract dispute, hiring the regarded Jacques Martin as head coach.
While Ottawa finished last overall once again, the 1995–96 season ended with renewed optimism, due in part to the upgraded management and coaching, also
LeBreton Flats
