Welcome

Ottawa In Depth Walking Tours gives private and public walking tours of historic downtown Ottawa, Canada’s national capital since 1867. Whether you want to take a deeper look beneath the surface, or only have time for a breezy overview of Ottawa, your walking tour with Ottawa In Depth Walking Tours will be time well spent.

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As a free public service for visitors, we also publish a Downtown Ottawa Public Washroom Map that shows public and publically-available washrooms in Ottawa’s downtown.

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Our informative and entertaining walking tours cost $100 for a 3-hour tour (up to 5 people) The full-day tour is $250 (again, 1 to 5 people). Rates for larger groups are negotiable.

We also offer one free public tour every week, on Wednesday afternoon. It runs from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. and requires prior registration, either by phone or email.

For contact details, go to the Contact and Pricing page.

For more information about the walking tours, you can go to the Walking Tours page, but let me first tell you about my company, Ottawa In Depth Walking Tours.

I love talking about the intertwined history of Ottawa and Canada. Beginning with the original Indigenous inhabitants, the long reign of the fur trade that opened the interior of the continent to the first Europeans, the heyday of the lumber industry beginning in the early 1800s, the surprise choice of Ottawa as the capital of British North America in the 1860s, Ottawa’s role for the next 60 years as an outpost of the British Empire, the long birth of Canadian national identity through the two world wars and afterwards, to Ottawa becoming the capital city of today’s Canada, an urban and increasingly multicultural country.

Are you interested in:

  • the political story of this very large and geographically dispersed country stretched across the northern half of North America. We tour Parliament Hill and talk about the special nature of Canadian federalism and Canadian parliamentary democracy
  • the architectural legacy of Ottawa
  • the better pubs, restaurants and gift shops around Parliament and in the historic Byward Market
  • a special look at Canadian art in the National Gallery
  • the colonization and marginalization of Canada’s Indigenous population
  • the emergence of the Canadian identity over the past century and Canada’s problematic relationship with the United States
  • the story of the Canadian economy over the past 300 years.

During the tour, I also point out some of the other sights or activities that Ottawa has to offer, that you might enjoy outside the tour.

A special note for those who have special needs, our specialty is walking tours but I also offer tours by car if preferred or necessary.

This is the link to the Walking Tours page.

For those who like longer articles, there is longform storytelling on the Blog page.