Queen Victoria chose Ottawa (nee Bytown) as Canada's capital on December 31, 1857. Ottawa is situated on the Ottawa (Outaouais) River which flows between Ontario and Quebec, Canada's two solitudes. How appropriate, or should I say apropos? Kingston was Canada's first capital, but it was located by the St. Lawrence River, across from the United States, and therefore deemed geographically vulnerable.
Regarding Canadian location identifiers, and remember that is what they do, identify a location. It has been said that as Canada's airports and airways were being established on the brink of World War II, the wisdom of our forefathers deemed it important to disguise military locations, specifically their radio navigation beacon idents, so that Axis aircraft and ships, etc., would be unable to determine their exact location, nor the nature of a certain facility, particularly if using just the navigation aid. The practice was abandoned in the 1950s. Examples of military fields that were disguised by their idents are: YXX - Abbotsford. YQQ - Comox. YYJ - Victoria. YAZ - Tofino. YXY - Whitehorse. YVQ - Norman Wells. I have about four dozen more examples. Joint civilian-military fields that were deemed acceptable risks had logical idents, such as VR for Vancouver. QB for Quebec City. Some joint civil-military fields hinted at only one letter, such as Montreal - UL. Lethbridge, QL, Medicine Hat - XH. Calgary - YC. There are exceptions, to be sure, but Fritz would be hard pressed to identify Gander by a beacon that identified "QX", and "YQ" for Churchill. Mr. Matsui would be puzzled by the morse-code "ZT" in aiding him to find Queen Charlotte Strait. So there you have it. Also, note that Canada was a founding member of ICAO, presently headquartered in Montreal. ICAO drew up the coded aeronautical boundaries of the world to a greater extent than IATA, as IATA's central thrust was to benefit airlines, not aviation as a whole.
Last edited by evansb; 5th May 2007 at 19:43.