Ottawa Grew A Lot Bigger in 10 Years

Here's a quick update: last year Katya and I took Max and Alyssa and moved from Guelph to Ottawa. The reasons were many.

We had been thinking about it for a couple of years. My immediate family all live in Ottawa. Rental and housing prices are much lower in Ottawa. There's a lot more support for growing a family, such as daycare subsidies and public transit and whatnot, in Ottawa.

That being said, I love Guelph. I loved living near my Grandfather and uncle and aunt. I love the parks, and the downtown, and the Stone Road area. I love how quiet and beautiful the city is, but also how vibrant and community-focused it is.

Nevertheless, we had to leave for the above-mentioned reasons.

So last February my brother drove down from Ottawa, I rented a U-haul, and we packed everything up and moved to Ottawa.

We stayed with my youngest sister for two months. It was supposed to be one month, but that extended to two when the place we found to rent changed their availability to May. My sister and her fiance were cool about it, and somehow lived with us and survived.

Today we're still in our little apartment near Mooney's Bay. There's a beach just five minutes walk away. We're on the sixth floor of a solid building with nobody but pigeons above us.

And here's the kicker. 


Ottawa has fucking grown huge!

It's the fourth largest city in Canada now, after Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. I remember when there were 700,000 people here. Now the population is passing 1.2 million!

You can feel it when driving, too.

There's insane traffic everywhere. The downtown is clogged with people. There aren't enough houses for everyone so the real estate market is unaffordable.

That last one sucks, because one reason we moved to Ottawa was there were more affordable houses. We aim to buy in the next few years (which is why we're renting a cheap apartment now), but prices keep going up.

That being said, the average house in Guelph is over $700,000, while in Ottawa it remains around $460,000. So there's that.

Anyways, here we are in Ottawa. Fun times!