UPCOMING EVENTS
Spring Reception and Ice Cream Social
Join us on Thursday May 15 from 6pm-7:30pm
Come celebrate our 2025 Opening Day with us from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM.
Enjoy FREE museum entry, tours, and… ICE CREAM! (we’ve got gluten-free & vegan options too!)
All ages welcome – bring your family, friends & curiosity!
Museum Members Only Event: Annual General Meeting
You’re invited to our Annual General Meeting, taking place on the same day, May 15, 2025.
We’ll have a special reception and AGM on the 3rd floor from 5:30-6:30pm.
Exhibitions
Explore the stories of Bytown and Ottawa’s rich cultural heritage, past and present, through our Permanent and Temporary Exhibitions.
Capital Healers: Ottawa’s Health Care Story
May 2024 – November 2025
Capital Healers, through a series of biographical and institutional sketches, explores and sheds light on the people, organizations, and events that helped shape health care in Ottawa from time immemorial, through the construction of the Rideau Canal and the early days of Bytown, to the opening of the Ottawa Civic Hospital in 1924. This early history laid the foundation for Ottawa becoming home today to some of the nation’s leading health care institutions.
Permanent Gallery
Our gallery recounts the history of the area that would become Ottawa. Since time immemorial, the Anishinàbe Algonquin People lived and hunted in the territory surrounding the Kichi Sìbì (the Great River), now known as the Ottawa River Valley.
Our Permanent Gallery exhibition is presented in English, French, and Anishnabemowin.
In 1826, British engineers under Lt.-Col. John By built the Rideau Canal, sparking the rise of Bytown. The booming timber trade turned it into a global lumber hub, infamous for its rowdy shantymen and violent reputation. In less than thirty years, Bytown evolved into the City of Ottawa; changing its name, its character, and its reputation, and eventually becoming a thriving capital city.
