Little Italy, Ottawa
neighbourhood in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Little Italy is a neighbourhood of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and the cultural centre of Ottawa's Italian community. Situated in Centretown West, its main commercial area is along Preston Street, with the heart of the community being at the corner of Preston and Gladstone Avenue.
Little Italy is adjacent to Chinatown, whose business district centres on Somerset Street.
History
Little Italy was initially settled around 1900 by Italian immigrants. Following a fire at a small Murray Street chapel, the 1913 founding of St. Anthony of Padua Church at the corner of Booth Street and Gladstone Avenue cemented the immigrants' connections with the neighbourhood. Roughly between World War I and World War II, a second wave of Italian immigrants was joined by communities of Ukrainian and Polish immigrants in the area. In recent years with the integration of European immigrants, the neighbourhood has found itself home to Asian immigrants, primarily from China and Vietnam.
In the 1960s a large section of the poorer neighbourhood was demolished, and replaced with the High School of Commerce, today the Adult High School in 1967. Since 1975, each June the neighbourhood hosts the Italian Week festival, Ottawa's celebration of Italian culture.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Little Italy, Ottawa” as neighbourhood in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as neighbourhood in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6650472. Authority coordinates are 45.404, -75.712. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1900, 1913, 1967 and 1975.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Little Italy, Ottawa”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Little Italy, Ottawa primary sources, Little Italy, Ottawa archive and Little research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Little Italy, Ottawa”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Little Italy, Ottawa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.