What does Ottawa sound like?
Is it city traffic? Is it the quiet hum of bureaucracy? Is it the roar of protests?
To answer these questions, Carleton University PhD candidate Gale Franklin and scholar Allyson Rogers launched a platform called “Sounds Like Canada” that leads audio tours of Parliament and surrounding areas.
“This project is a bringing together of history, music, sound studies and studies of the city of Ottawa,” Franklin told the Charlatan.
Narrative dialogue guides users around, while what Rogers and Franklin believe to be the “Sounds of Canada” play out.
“[A goal of the project is] getting people to think about listening and what their relationship is to sound,” Rogers said.
The project has been in the works since 2023 with help from Ottawa-based sound engineer Rohan Deshpande. It focuses on Ottawa’s downtown core, with some of the city sounds directly recorded by the creators.
The soundscape includes audio from the “Freedom Convoy,” traffic, construction and the latest rendition of the ceremonial guard procession.
Kerry Badgley, a Carleton Canadian history professor, said including sounds from the convoy is important to offer a nuanced look at Canadian history.
“The Freedom Convoy is something that is a very negative association for most people,” he said.
“For those of us who suffered through it, it was an … incredibly negative experience.”
Part of what is interesting about the project is the focus on listening, which is often overlooked, Badgley added.
“For a lot of people, it will bring another dimension to it,” he said, adding that Ottawa’s sounds are always changing.
Ottawa was a lumber town up until the 1960s, he explained, so the city’s sounds would have been related to sawmill and construction.
Now, sounds are more urbanized and modern.
“I think it’s traffic, for one,” he said. “One of the other things that more and more people are becoming attuned to are just the sounds of the LRT.”
The project asks the listener to define Canadian identity in a more nuanced way, taking in the ambience of the city, Franklin added.
“I would be happy to know that someone got to think a little bit more deeply about their relationships to the city, their relationships to Ottawa as unceded Algonquin territory, the ways that the city is not necessarily natural,” she said.
“It was created to be organized in ways that often sustain power.”
To kick off the project’s launch, Franklin will host a public walk-through of the tour on Nov. 1.
Featured graphic by Alisha Velji/the Charlatan
