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Capitals of the world

Ottawa, capital of Canada: facts and figures

Updated 28 August 2026 · 3 min read · DailyGeo team

Key figures

Climate through the year

Ottawa averages -6.4 °C in winter and 20.1 °C in summer. January is the coldest month of the year and July the warmest, and the city receives 1,111 mm of precipitation in an average year.

What makes it stand out

• Winter: 3rd coldest capital in the world (-6.4 °C).
• Age: 2nd most recently founded capital in North America (1855).
• Latitude: northernmost capital in North America (45.42°).
• Wealth: 2nd capital of the richest country per head in North America ($55,698).
• Isolation: 2nd most isolated capital in North America (732 km).

Nearest capitals

Distances are great-circle distances between city centres, which is what the Capitals game measures when it tells you how far a guess was from the answer. Washington is the closest capital to Ottawa.

How to remember it

Reading a figure once rarely fixes it in memory. Attach Ottawa to a place and a number you already know: it is 732 km from Washington, and it is the 92nd largest capital in the atlas. Then practise retrieving it. DailyGeo Capitals gives you one mystery capital a day with distance, direction, language and population clues, the memorising method explains the review schedule, and the capitals index lists all 172.

To see how Canada compares with every other country on figures like these, the most expensive Big Mac index ranks them on geopolitix, a country-ranking game by the same maker as DailyGeo.

Sources

• City population and coordinates: DailyGeo's own game data, the same figures the Capitals game plays with. Population follows the urban area rather than the commune, which is why no density is quoted.
• Temperature and rainfall: ten-year means (2015 to 2024) computed from ERA5 reanalysis, retrieved through Open-Meteo. Hersbach, H., et al. (2020). The ERA5 global reanalysis. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.
• Elevation: terrain height at the city's coordinates in the Copernicus DEM, read through Open-Meteo rather than taken from a curated claim.
• Time zone: resolved from the same coordinates.
• Country figures: the World Bank, latest reported year for each series: Country GDP, GDP per capita, Country population, Life expectancy, Internet users.
• Big Mac price: The Economist's Big Mac index, from its published dataset. The index covers about 55 economies, so most capitals here have no figure.
• Founding date: Wikidata, earliest recorded founding claim.
• This capital elsewhere: Wikipedia, UNdata, Wikidata.
• Method and limits: How this data was collected explains how each figure was collected and what it does not cover.

The short answer

Keep learning

• Washington, capital of United States: facts and figures

  Washington is the capital of United States: 6,300,000 residents, 31 m above sea level, 3.5 °C in winter and 24.5 °C in summer. Key figures and sources.

• Nassau, capital of Bahamas: facts and figures

  Nassau is the capital of Bahamas: 270,000 residents, 3 m above sea level, 23.3 °C in winter and 28.5 °C in summer. Key figures and sources.

• Havana, capital of Cuba: facts and figures

  Havana is the capital of Cuba: 2,100,000 residents, 14 m above sea level, 23.2 °C from December to February and 28.2 °C from June to August. Key figures and sources.

• Capitals of the world: the full list by continent

  Every capital in DailyGeo's atlas, grouped by continent, with population, elevation and winter and summer temperatures, each linking to its own data page.