I moved from Montreal to Ottawa in 1995, and it wasn't love at first sight. It took the ducks on the Rideau River to make me park my big-city attitude and start finding things to love around here.

In this book I try to show lesser-known aspects of Ottawa, without necessarily turning my back on the clichés. The Peace Tower and Rideau Canal are part of the fabric of Ottawa; but they're not all of it, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Of course this book doesn't pretend to show all of Ottawa either; it's only my vision of it, shaped over fifteen years of walking the streets, hiking the trails and riding the buses. This book is a love song for a city that took me by the heart almost by surprise and in spite of myself.

Enjoy...

- Stéphanie