Manotick, Ontario

Manotick, Ontario is an exurb in Eastern Ontario on the Rideau River, located on the south edge of Ottawa's urban area. Manotick is located immediately south of the booming suburbs Barrhaven and Riverside South and is about 25 km (15.5 miles) from downtown Ottawa. It has been part of the City of Ottawa since amalgamation in 2001. It had a 2006 population of 4623.

In the 1830s, a small settlement formed in the area of the newly constructed Long Island lock on the Rideau Canal, but no development was done in the area of present day Manotick. In 1858, when a bulkhead was constructed across the west branch of the Rideau River in the location of present day Manotick, entrepreneur Moss Kent Dickinson and his partner Joseph Merrill Currier obtained the water rights and constructed a mill. It was Dickinson, who in 1864 named the new village "Manotick," after the Ojibwa word meaning "island in the river". Mills established by Dickinson and Currier helped spur the development of the settlement. One of these, Watson's Mill, survives today (open to the public). As commercial traffic on the Rideau became less important, the population in the village declined. The population in the village rebounded as Manotick came to be viewed by some as a bedroom community for Ottawa, joining the City of Ottawa in 2001.

With over-development of housing in south Ottawa, and Barrhaven rapidly growing,...
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