EmoriaCustom art prints and star maps
Maps · Collection 01

Ottawa poster, drawn from the real map

45.4215°N / 75.6972°W · Canada

A border runs here down the middle of a body of water: not a street and not a strait, and two provinces share the sheet on either side of it.

You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.

Compose my Ottawa poster
What the map shows

A border carried by a river, and the thread that made the city

The Ottawa comes in from the west, widens in front of the centre into a sheet strewn with islands, then bends away to the north-east. A second river comes down from the north to join it, a third arrives winding from the east: three waters for one city, and two provinces sharing the sheet. Downtown holds the south bank, in the angle made by the great river and the thread of the canal, the only place on this map where the streets genuinely tighten.

Read on

The canal leaves the river right beside the centre, runs due south, widens halfway down into a small lake, then continues to the bottom of the sheet. It is thin and it survives the rendering, legible from end to end. The rest of what the city usually shows is not here: the locks are too small to have a shape, rail never has one, and the parliament buildings are only one footprint among others. South of the centre, though, a large enclave with no buildings keeps its field lines: a farm, which on the detailed background becomes the sheet's one breath.

Compose your own

What suits Ottawa

The palette

Three rivers and a canal: the water ink is the principal colour here, and it has to stay legible down to a two pixel thread. Take it deep, with no transparency, and be wary of soft blues, which will make the great river handsome and erase the canal, which is to say the subject. Green counts too, but differently: the wooded masses in the north-west and the farm in the south are the two breaths in this sheet, and too pale a tone would hand them back to the built fabric. The rest can stay light.

The framing

Portrait, the great river in the upper third with the far bank included, and the canal running down to the bottom. The engraved point is downtown, which puts it right at the water: centred on it, the frame cuts off the northern province and the confluence, and those are half the subject. So the centre is raised a notch. At the bottom, the suburb and the airport can leave at no cost; at the top, the woods of the north-west are worth keeping, they hold that corner of the sheet.

The caption

The title, one line under it, the coordinates. A lock number, the name of a bridge, the year you moved: here the caption line can say which bank you are speaking from, which is not nothing when the bank is a border.

The sheet
Subject
Ottawa, Canada
Palette
Grès de Nepean
Map style
Clean and Detailed
Layout
Frame
Typeface
Deco
Framing
Zoom 11.2
Fade at the edges
20%
Format
Portrait
The palette of this poster

Grès de Nepean

Sixteen inks, in the configurator’s order. It is not in the catalogue, but you will find it in the palette library, filed under its material.

  • Background
  • Water
  • Greenery
  • Built-up areas
  • Roads
  • Buildings
  • Text
  • Motorways
  • Main roads
  • Secondary roads
  • Minor roads
  • Streets
  • Service roads
  • Paths
  • Railways
  • Borders
Compose with this paletteStart from it to make your own

Opens the colour workshop with these 16 inks in place: change one, keep the rest.

It will wait in your account, ready for any piece.

What the drawing tells

Three dates that explain the city

1826Two hundred and two kilometres to avoid a border

The Royal Engineers under Lieutenant Colonel John By cut the Rideau Canal: two hundred and two kilometres and forty-seven locks through to the port of Kingston on Lake Ontario. It was a military waterway, laid out to stay clear of the American border, and it still operates on its original route. At its northern entrance a construction camp grew up, Bytown, named for the officer. This city was born from a work of engineering, not from a site.

1855Bytown changes its name

Bytown, by then a city, was renamed Ottawa. The military engineer's name left the map at the exact moment the place stopped being a construction site. A change like that leaves no trace in a plan, which is precisely why it is written here: the form you are looking at dates from the works, the name it carries came afterwards.

1857A queen settled it between the rival towns

Queen Victoria ended the quarrel between the candidate towns and chose Ottawa as the seat of government of the Province of Canada, by a despatch of 31 December. Confederation would make it the capital of the Dominion ten years later. A lumber town on the line between two provinces, named capital by a sovereign who had never seen it: the map does not explain that decision, but it shows the reason for it, a position exactly between two worlds.

Before ordering

The four questions people ask

Can I choose any place, any date?

Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.

What sizes do you offer?

From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.

What materials do you offer?

Four, from the barest to the most dressed.

  • Matte fine art paperA 200 gsm art paper with a deep matte finish: the bare print, to frame as you please.
  • Wooden hangersThe print suspended between two wooden hangers, ready to hang, in the spirit of studio posters.
  • The classic frameThe print mounted under acrylic glass in a slim frame, assembled by hand, delivered ready to hang.
  • Framed canvasThe piece printed on canvas, stretched over a wooden stretcher bar and set in a frame: a gallery presence.
How long does it take?

Allow 1 to 4 working days for making, up to 7 for hand-assembled frames and canvases, then 1 to 6 working days in transit with standard delivery.

Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece is emailed to you as soon as you order.

All the questions

Your Ottawa

The bridge you crossed without thinking about it, the stretch of canal you walked, the bank you actually lived on. The border is the same for everyone. The side you called home is not.

Compose my Ottawa poster