The EQ Journal Blog

New initiatives to help our City develop don’t always have to involve heroic measures like getting major projects such as Lansdowne Live approved. There are more prosaic things that our City can do that could have a significant impact on our city-state economy.

A few years ago, I worked in the south end of Ottawa for a successful local tech company and pretty much each day I would pass this sign on Prince of Wales:

Not a very impressive welcome for some of the more than 5,000,000 tourists who visit Ottawa each year. This got me thinking about directional signage.

If you are operating a major tourist destination like Disney World or Granville Island, you need to be thinking about way-finding signage and I don’t just mean once you have arrived on site. I think we should be thinking of Ottawa-Gatineau as one entity that we are marketing to Canadians and the world.

I remember, before amalgamation of Ottawa’s 11 municipalities and regional government into one city, being chided by friends from Toronto who upon leaving Scotiabank Place to return to their downtown hotels after a Sens-Leafs game would see a west-facing sign on Highway 417 that said: “Welcome to Ottawa, Population 325,000”. This was at a time when Ottawa-Gatineau’s population was actually 1.1 million (it’s now about 1.2 million). “Why in the world, Firestone, would you ever put a NHL team in a town with 325,000 people?” I would be asked.

Now this isn’t just an issue for visitors or media from out of town—getting the right information out there about Canada’s Capital City is important to people who live here too.

I recently gave the keynote speech at an entrepreneurship conference in Halifax. They are in tough—at any one time, 40,000 students (many from out of Province) are enrolled at colleges and universities in Nova Scotia (the highest density of tertiary students in Canada) but they lose 45,000 young people to other jurisdictions over a four year period. Exporting talented, well-educated people is a huge drain on Nova Scotia—as a result they have the oldest demographics in Canada and it is aging fast.

My thought was that it was very important for people who live here to know that we have a metro population in excess of one million and that, partly as a result, you can stay in Ottawa and create world-class enterprises. I would guess if you did a poll of young people between 15 and 25, who live in Ottawa-Gatineau, fewer than a third of them could correctly guess how big our urban agglomeration has become.

I want young entrepreneurs that I teach and others like them to stay here after they graduate and not move down the road to TO or other larger cities.

There are seven main engines for growth in Ottawa (Government, Technology, Tourism, Health, Education, Real Estate and Entrepreneurship) of which four appear to be doing fine and three (Technology, Tourism and Entrepreneurship) could stand to see some improvement. I proposed a number of years ago, that we erect large scale signs like that shown below at key nodes 50 km and 100 km from Ottawa as well as inside the city. This would help tourism but also entrepreneurship and tech.

Some locations I had in mind included:

1. Scotiabank Place.
2. East end—Highways 417 and 174.
4. South end—Highways 416 and 16.
6. Intersection of Highway 416 and 401—east bound.
7. Intersection of Highway 416 and 401—west bound.
8. Interstate Highway 81.
9. South end—Highway 31.
10. Sparks Street.
11. By-ward market.
12. Quebec Highways (174, 50 and 5).
13. Highway 7 towards Carleton Place.
14. West end of Highway 417 towards Arnprior.
15. Ottawa International Airport.
16. Ottawa Convention Centre.

Some of the locations are in-town like the Sparks Street Mall. This is obviously for educational purposes not way-finding…

My hope was to create something really striking featuring: a red maple leaf, NRC time, Environment Canada weather and a Stats Canada population counter for Ottawa-Gatineau and for Canada. As a former Vice-Chair of CIRA (the Canadian Internet Registry Authority), I thought to maybe add a real time dot-CA counter too—Canada’s land grab on the Internet is an important way of building Canada’s brand in virtual space. This would be another way to get more people to at least think about using the dot-CA as opposed to a US-based dot-COM.

Now these 10 to 15 metre-high signs are not inexpensive so I also added an activision component that could support the whole enterprise without government funding. Sponsors would appear on the signs and pay for that time but the signs could also be used to promote festivals like Winterlude, the Dragon Boat Festival, Hope Beach Volleyball … Events and attractions at the NAC, Canadian Museum of Civilization, War Museum, Canadian Art Gallery, the OAG, SBP and so forth could also be featured.

We have organizations here in Ottawa that have access to sponsors who could sustain an effort like this. We also have other organizations whose responsibility it is to get initiatives like this off the ground. Carpe Diem.

Professor Bruce M. Firestone, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, Founder, Ottawa Senators, Executive Director, Exploriem.org, Broker, Partners Advantage GMAC.