Ottawa Quotes

Less than fifteen cents to the province and more than twenty-five cents to Ottawa, this is far from being excessive! (Maurice Duplessis)

It's one thing for a courier service transport letters and documents from one city to another at a cost that only big business can afford; but it's another thing to take a letter from an Indian boy studying at the University of Ottawa to his mother in Old Crow.

Jean Chrétien

When I appointed the Minister of the Environment to major cabinet status, the Planning and Priorities committee, the signals that that sent through Ottawa were major, because that's what the bureaucracy understands.

Brian Mulroney

What Ottawa and Washington used to think about Turkey or Iran was not very important because we really didn't think much about either, but now what we think about them is extremely important - to ourselves and to many other peoples.

Arthur Hays Sulzberger

In Washington they have their hawks and doves and in Ottawa we have our parrots.

Tommy Douglas

Well, the issue of a standing UN army has been raised by many because, quite frankly, the way we operate today is like telling Ottawa that I know you need a fire station but we will build one when the fire breaks. We have no army. When the crisis breaks then we begin to put an army together. We go around to governments and begin asking for troops. The question with a standing UN army is that it raises issues of budget issues, legal issues, where do you place it, under what jurisdiction? And the big boys, big countries don't want it. The smaller countries are also nervous.

Kofi Annan

On a craggy bluff above the majestic Ottawa River stands the remarkable embodiment of our system of governance: Parliament.

John Allen Fraser

I was a very good tennis player in Ottawa, Canada - nationally ranked when I was, like, 13. Then I moved to Los Angeles when I was 15, and everyone in L.A. just killed me. I was pretty great in Canada. Not so much in Los Angeles.

Matthew Perry (actor)

If Ottawa giveth, then Ottawa can taketh away... This is one more reason why Westerners, but Albertans in particular, need to think hard about their future in this country. After sober reflection, Albertans should decide that it is time to seek a new relationship with Canada. ...Having hit a wall, the next logical step is not to bang our heads against it. It is to take the bricks and begin building another home – a stronger and much more autonomous Alberta. It is time to look at Quebec and to learn. What Albertans should take from this example is to become "maitres chez nous."

Stephen Harper

If Ottawa giveth, then Ottawa can taketh away.

Stephen Harper

It's a privilege and it's an honour and Olivia and I are certainly looking forward to visiting this beautiful, historic building and being able to stay there during the session when we're here in Ottawa. (Jack Layton)

Jargon or gobbledygook, or what people who live in Washington or Ottawa call "federal prose," [is] the gabble of abstractions and vague words which avoids any simple or direct statement.... Direct and simple language always has some force behind it, and the writers of gobbledygook don't want to be forceful; they want to be soothing and reassuring.

Northrop Frye

Whenever it was necessary to have a large entourage, we used military vehicles or, as for the two state funerals and our state swearing in, we hired every spare Cadillac from every undertaking firm in Ottawa. It's a make-shift way to operate a country of the size and rank of Canada.

Judy LaMarsh

My family was a good family, I had a great Canadian education and I came up in a great, little town like Ottawa.

Paul Anka

Progressive Conservative candidates from Quebec want to exert real power in Ottawa, not simply be content with playing a secondary role.

Kim Campbell

I became a big Kings fan, and then later on my hometown of Ottawa got a team, so then I was very, very torn. I just love both of those teams very much.

Matthew Perry (actor)

I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.

Margaret Atwood

The desire of Whites to occupy Indian lands, and the constant rivalry between French and English traders for furs gathered by the Indians, led to many skirmishes and several bloody wars, all of which involved Indians on both sides. The Whites were determined to fight it out with each other-down to the last Indian. These battles culminated in the French and Indian War of 1763, which represented a disaster to many Indian groups in the northeastern part of the continent. In May, 1763, an Ottawa warrior by the name of Pontiac fell upon Detroit and captured the English forts, one after the other. Lord Jeffery Amherst... distributed among the Indians handkerchiefs and blankets from the small pox hospital at Fort Pitt-probably the first use of biological warfare in history.

Peter Farb