Bytown Museum reopens galleries with new focus on 200 years of Indigenous and settler history
The 1827 Commissariat building on the Rideau Canal now emphasizes long-standing Indigenous presence alongside stories of canal workers, lumber barons, and the city's transformation from Bytown.
Sources · local media reports
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On the edge of the Rideau Canal, where green water slips past the Ottawa locks, sits the Bytown Museum—a squat stone building built in 1827 during construction of the Rideau Canal. The old Commissariat building once served as the military supply hub for Colonel John By's ambitious engineering project, storing offices, records, food, gunpowder, and alcohol for thousands of workers carving a water route between Ottawa and Kingston.
Today, a renewed permanent exhibition called Where Ottawa Begins traces the city's story from long before Bytown existed through the First World War. Much of the structure remains remarkably unchanged—the heavy wooden rafters and the vault where supplies were locked away are original.
A recent renewal of the museum's galleries has placed greater emphasis on Indigenous histories and perspectives. Towering over the entrance staircase is River to Sky, a two-storey mural created by local Indigenous artists Claire Brazeau and Emily Brascoupé of the Three Sisters Art Collective. Nearby are some of the museum's oldest objects: stone tools discovered along the banks of the Kichi Zībī, or Ottawa River.
"These are some stone tools that are found along the banks of the Kichi Zībī or the Ottawa River," said Chloe Dennis, exhibition and collections manager at the Bytown Museum.
Long before Colonel By arrived, the Ottawa, Rideau, and Gatineau rivers served as gathering places, transportation corridors, and trade routes for Indigenous communities. The exhibition moves from there into the arrival of Colonel By and the massive undertaking that transformed a rugged settlement into Bytown.
One display contains a trunk that belonged to Colonel By himself. Beside it are silhouettes of By, his wife, and daughters—considered among the only true likenesses of him. Another artifact reflects the prestige and politics tied to the canal project: the Drummond Cup, a silver presentation cup commissioned by By for contractor Robert Drummond. Inscribed on its side is May 1831—the canal's original completion target. The waterway would not officially open until the following year.
Labourers, mostly Irish immigrants along with Scottish, English, French Canadian, and American workers, spent years clearing forests, blasting rock, and digging channels through swampy terrain. "It was really hard, laborious work," Dennis said. "They worked long days, six days a week. There was disease, danger, explosions, things like that." The museum estimates roughly 1,000 workers died during canal construction.
Founded by the Women's Canadian Historical Society of Ottawa in 1917, the museum moved into the building in 1951 and opened there in 1952.
The details
What is the permanent exhibition at the Bytown Museum called?
The permanent exhibition is called 'Where Ottawa Begins' and traces the city's story from long before Bytown existed through the First World War.
Who created the River to Sky mural at the museum's entrance?
Local Indigenous artists Claire Brazeau and Emily Brascoupé of the Three Sisters Art Collective created the two-storey River to Sky mural that towers over the entrance staircase.
How many workers died during the construction of the Rideau Canal?
The Bytown Museum estimates roughly 1,000 workers died during Rideau Canal construction.
