Ottawa Entertainment

Ottawa is a typical capital city in that it offers a highly rich and varied selection of evening entertainment venues, with something to suit all tastes and most budgets. Whether you are a young single traveller looking for a raucous night on the tiles, a middle-aged couple seeking fine dining or an evening of culture, or a family looking to keep the children entertained; the city won’t disappoint.

Nightlife

Byward Market is one of the best places to head for an evening, irrespective of your background, as it offers venues that cater to a wide variety of tastes. Various live music venues, Irish pubs, student bars, café-bars and restaurants can be found among the wide selection of establishments offering evening entertainment.

Elsewhere in the city, areas such as Bank street and Elgin Street are good places to head for a drink, as both are home to a number of bars with an emphasis on exclusivity, which may appeal to those in the higher salary bracket. Meanwhile, parents with children will find a large number of movie theatres across the city, where all the latest releases are shown.

Theatre and music

Visitors looking to catch a traditional theatrical show of an evening will find a number of venues catering to them. The Ottawa Little Theatre, for example, airs both modern and classical performances, with Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde among examples of the latter.

The National Arts Centre, meanwhile, is commonly considered the most diverse and certainly the most significant performance art venue in the country and is the setting for a variety of musical, theatrical, comedic and choreographic productions throughout the year.

For live music, Byward Market again is a good place to head, with a number of venues hosting performances by local singers and musicians. The chances of catching an Irish/Celtic act at one of the four pubs that comprise the Little Ireland section are exceedingly good if you pay a visit at the weekend.

Festivals

There are a number of annual summer festivals that are unique to the city, with highlights including:

• The Canadian Tulip Festival is the world’s biggest tulip festival and sees over 15kms of the city transformed by literally millions of these attractive flowers (May).
• The Ottawa Fringe Festival sees ‘alternative’ performers from genres such as music, comedy and performance art, showcase their talents before large audiences of enthusiastic viewers (June).
• The annual Carnival of Cultures is held at the Astrolabe Theatre and features performances from around the world in media such as music, song and dance (June). 
• The Ottawa Folk Festival emphasises the city’s close relationship with folk tradition in an event that sees music, dance, storytelling and crafts (August).
• The Ottawa SuperEX event is held for 11 days and sees a varied programme, which includes animal displays, fashion shows and sporting performances among other events.