International Seasonings

This project was created and launched by the 2019-2020 Digital Humanities Capstone class at the University of Ottawa. As a team, the seven students combined their diverse educational backgrounds and skills with Professor Jada Watson to develop this storymap on immigration in Ottawa from 2006 to 2016. Using Census data, the team mapped how immigration has shaped and influenced Ottawa through cultural institutions such as restaurants. Users are able to read more on the story of immigration in Ottawa and explore different cultural food establishments from all continents of the world

The Data Mappers team hopes that you are as inspired by the history of Ottawa's cultural food establishments as they were!

The Census is a nationally distributed survey that is conducted every five years. Information gathered from the Census is used for the planning of public services such as schools, public transportation, family services and fire and police services. Information collected is used by the government, businesses and organizations. 

The Census comes in two forms, the short-form and the long-form. The short-form has fewer questions in comparison to the long-form. It contains questions such as name, date of birth, relationship status and mother tongue. The long-form contains all short-form questions along with questions about health problems, family history, the status of immigration, education and employment. However, questions included in one Census may not be repeated in the previous or future Census. 

To access data on immigration and language, data tables were extracted from the Statistics Canada website. This  link  leads to the 2016 Ottawa Census profile which includes data on immigration and language. This  link  leads to the 2006 Ottawa Census profile. The 1996 Census of Canada can be accessed from this  link .

In the 2006 and 2016 Census, the term "ethnic origins" may refer to either the ethnic or cultural origins of a person’s ancestors. As of the 2006 Census, an individual has been able to list up to 6 ethnic origins as their ancestry origins, meaning that they can have a single or multiple ethnic origins. This may refer to a person’s geo-cultural "roots" and not their citizenship, nationality, language, or place of birth. Responses to the Census question on "ethnic origin" are based on each individual's personal understanding of their ancestry, heritage and identity and are therefore influenced by their social environment and the amount of time it has been since a person’s family has immigrated to Canada. The terms ”ethnic origin”, “ethnic group”, and “ethnic ancestry” are now used interchangeably in the Census.

According to the 2016 Census,  21.9% of the Census population  in Canada identified as a landed immigrant or permanent resident. For the first time in Canadian Census history, Africa ranks second in immigration population (with 13.4%) ahead of Europe. Asia (including the Middle East) remains, however, the top continent of recent immigrants, with the majority (61.8%) of newcomers born in Asia.

In Ottawa, 19.3% of the 2016 Census population identified as an immigrant. The largest percentage of the immigrant population in the nation's capital are from Asia (41.2%), with Europe (26.1%) coming in second, followed by Africa (16.2%) and the Americas (16.1%). The smallest percentage of the Ottawa's immigrant population are from the continent of Oceania (0.4%).

To discover more about the change in immigrant population to Ottawa from 2006 to 2016, interact with the maps below. The intensity of the colours on each map refer to the percentage of immigrants out of all the immigrants from a given continent living in that census tract.

Immigrant languages show strong growth in the 2016 Census.  Statistics Canada  identified “immigrant languages” as “languages whose existence in Canada is originally due to immigration after English and French colonization,” but excludes Aboriginal languages and sign languages. In the  2016 Census , more than 7.3 million respondents reported that they spoke an immigrant language at home. In the nation’s capital, 199,765 respondents reported speaking an immigrant language, with 99,190 reporting speaking an immigrant language at home and 3,425 at work. The top immigrant languages in Canada – and indeed in Ottawa as the results below show – include Arabic and Asian languages. Use of Asian is increasing in many work places, as in Kanata, where many high tech companies operate bilingually in English and Mandarin.

As indicated in a  2017 report  by Statistics Canada, it is becoming more common for multiple languages to be spoken in homes of Canadians of all origins. Not surprisingly, English and French remain pathways of integration into Canadian society, especially in the Ottawa-Gatineau region and the province of Quebec. English-French bilingualism reached the highest level by 2016. However, amongst Ottawa’s immigrant population, use of the English language at home is increasing, while French is in decline.

Learn more about the different cuisines that immigrants have brought to Ottawa! Click on a pin or scroll to discover unique restaurants and the backstories behind them. Pins include links to reviews of the restaurant, food forums, and the websites of different restaurants.

Explore the different ethnic restaurants in Ottawa by scrolling through each map containing the respective continental cuisines. By zooming into the maps, you can see all the different restaurants and which census tract the restaurant falls into. Every icon on the map represents a different restaurant. Click on the icons to learn more about each restaurant!