Club Contacts

President: Harry Qualman, harryqualman@gmail.com

Club Info

We are a francophone club with 34 members. We meet both in Ottawa, Ontario and its sister city, Gatineau, Québec.  Our members, who are bilingual, come from all around the region of the national capital and live in the provinces of Québec and Ontario. We have a hosting capacity of 15. Our club celebrated 20 years of existence in 2021.

Area Info

Our region is situated in the Ottawa valley and includes the Gatineau Hills on the Québec side.   Ottawa, the capital of Canada, is on the Outaouais river but is crossed by the Rideau river whose falls flow into the Outaouais. The Gatineau river also flows into the Outaouais river. The foliage of our maple trees is particularly attractive in the fall. Our many museums and government sites attract world travelers.

Canada celebrated 150 years as a country in 2017. Our national holiday, Canada Day, is July 1st. Our National Arts Centre has a world-class symphony orchestra, a program of touring ballet companies, opera companies and theatre companies.  Ottawa has a population of about 1 million persons and Gatineau has a population of 225,000.  We are located about 3 hours from Montreal and 5 hours north of Toronto.

Typical Journey

Our typical program would include a visit to the Parliament Buildings, the Governor-General’s official dwelling, a few of our national museums including the National Art Gallery of Canada, a boat ride on the Rideau canal, and viewing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Musical Ride, if they are in town.  We also go to Park Omega where you can see and feed some of the abundant wildlife in our area and Montebello, one of the largest log structures in the world where world leaders have met.  We like to receive visitors in May for the tulip festival or up through mid-June or again in September-October when the autumn leaves are at their most beautiful.

Occasionally we have offered a winter program which is quite different and usually takes place during Winterlude, our winter carnival, with lots of outdoor activities such as ice-fishing, skating on the canal, touring the ice sculptures. There is lots of snow and ice here in the winter time.   Our program includes certain museum and government site visits as well. The closest airport is the Ottawa Airport – about 30 minutes from downtown in light traffic. The cost to participants for a week-long program is about US $250.