By Magdalene Cooman, Executive Director, Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership

Every June, Ottawa comes together for Welcoming Ottawa Week (WOW) a citywide celebration, led by OLIP since 2013, that brings newcomers, community members, and civic leaders together to mark just how far a welcoming city can go. This year’s theme, *200 Years: Many Stories, One Ottawa*, felt especially personal to write about.

As always, the launch was guided by two familiar voices: Sarah Onyango from Rogers TV and Alan Neele from CBC Radio, who have hosted the WOW Launch for years and once again brought their warmth and steady presence to the morning.

A Full Morning

The morning began with a lively performance by Oh Canada Eh, followed by Elder Claudette Commanda, Chancellor of the University of Ottawa, offering a land acknowledgment for the traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation — a reminder that, in many ways, we are all newcomers here. From there, the room moved through remarks from OLIP Chair Dominique Dennery and a fireside chat, moderated by Deborah Tunis, Co-chair, between Nutrition Blocks founder Abhijit Potdar and CBC Commotion host Alamin Abdelmahmoud, and the presentation of this year’s Welcoming Ottawa Ambassador Awards by Mayor Mark Sutcliffe. It was a full morning, and by the end of it, I found myself thinking less about the program and more about what it all added up to.

This year’s theme, 200 Years: Many Stories, One Ottawa, asks us to remember that our capital’s history is not fixed. It’s a narrative we are writing together, every single day, through the everyday acts of welcome that happen at counters, in boardrooms, and across neighbourhoods.

Why This Work Matters to Me

I thought immediately of my own story. I came to Ottawa in 2003, and this year I marked 23 years of calling this city home. Like so many newcomers, those early years were not easy — I navigated an unfamiliar job market, raised a family far from everything I knew, and quietly wondered whether Ottawa would ever feel the way home once did: a place of unquestioned belonging.

It has. But not by accident.

It happened because of people. Jean-Christie opened her home to me during my first week in Ottawa, giving me safety when I needed it most. Long before “Welcoming Ottawa Week Ambassador” was a title, she was already living it. The late Franklyn Harvey made a referral to Dominique Dennery, OLIP’s Chair, who became my first employer and the mentor who helped me find my footing as a professional here. They are just two of the hundreds of people who have made me feel at home — and their example is why I made my own intentional choice, years ago, to give back by championing the integration of newcomers in this city. Everything I put in has come back to me many times over — but most importantly, I feel proud to be a part of the many stories of making Ottawa a welcoming city.

That personal history is part of why the WOW Ambassador recognitions mean so much to me. This year, OLIP received nearly 300 nominations from newcomers across Ottawa, and Mayor Sutcliffe presented awards to five outstanding individuals chosen from that group. But I know — and I suspect everyone in that room knew, including the past Ambassadors seated among us — that there are countless others doing the same quiet, generous work across Ottawa every day, unrecognized and unasked.

Celebrating Our Community Leaders

The recognitions that morning extended to our own as well. LASI honoured two members of OLIP’s leadership community with Leadership Awards: Saint-Phard Désir, former member of the OLIP Executive Committee, who recently retired from CESOC, and Kelli Toner, former Co-Chair of the Health and Well-Being sector table, who recently retired from South-East Ottawa Community Health Centre.  Both have given years of steady, generous work to this sector, and it was a fitting moment to recognize them in front of the community they helped build.

There was a quieter moment, too. On behalf of LASI, Andrea Gardener of the Jewish Family Services Centre paid tribute to Mr. Abdirizak Karod of the Somali Family Services Centre, who recently passed away.  He served in this position for three decades.  In a room filled largely with settlement sector colleagues — many of whom had known him personally — it was a gesture that mattered. It was a reminder that this sector is, above all, a community: one that celebrates together, and one that grieves together too.

The Work Ahead

None of this happens in isolation, either. I’m deeply grateful to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada for the vision, over two decades ago, of creating and funding Local Immigration Partnerships across the country. That framework fundamentally changed how the settlement sector works — moving us from siloed efforts toward a shared, community-wide approach. Having both Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and IRCC’s Maxine Ifill, Director General of Settlement, at the podium this year was a reminder that welcoming newcomers is a shared civic and national priority, not the work of any one organization.

I’d be doing this moment a disservice, though, if I only spoke of celebration. The settlement sector is currently navigating real funding constraints, and organizations across our network are having to reorganize and protect essential programs on the fly. These pressures are real, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But our resolve hasn’t shrunk to match our resources. We know the work of building a welcoming community is too important to pause.

What Welcoming Looks Like

Because at its core, this work is about dignity and respect. It’s found in the countless small, human acts of welcome that, multiplied across a whole city, become something bigger than any one of them. I want to live in an Ottawa where those acts are felt everywhere — not by chance, and not only through individual acts of hospitality, as beautiful as those are, but through infrastructure and strategy woven into the fabric of how our city works. That means public spaces that are genuinely accessible and inclusive; civic and political life open to diverse voices; an economy that recognizes and values global experience; and health, education, and social services designed around the realities newcomers actually face when they arrive.

That’s the vision our Partnership Council, sector tables, and working groups pursue every day, often out of public view. OLIP launched Welcoming Ottawa Week back in 2013, and it’s needed now more than ever: roughly 30,000 newcomers arrive in Ottawa each year. My hope is that Welcoming Ottawa Week, with more than 50 events across the city, will become a spark for all of us to carry that same energy back into our own sectors and institutions, so that the next person who arrives in Ottawa feels welcomed immediately and has what they need to thrive.

Looking back now that the week is behind us, I can say it delivered on that hope. Partner organizations across Ottawa hosted an incredible range of activities — guided tours, cultural performances, food events, sports tournaments, creative workshops, talks on business and entrepreneurship, multiculturalism, art, and more — each one, in its own way, an act of welcome. None of it happens without the dedication of the organizations who plan and run these events year after year, and I want to acknowledge them here: thank you for once again showing newcomers, and all of us, just how warmly this city can welcome people in.

Mark your calendars: next year’s WOW Celebration Event will take place on June 21st, 2027. If this year’s celebration is any indication, it will be worth being part of — and there are more ways to join in than simply attending.

If you’re a settlement worker, a community leader, or someone who has simply benefited from a welcoming hand in Ottawa, consider this an invitation:

• nominate a Welcoming Ottawa Ambassador when nominations open
• host or co-host an event during WOW 2027, or volunteer your time during the week itself
• if your organization hasn’t yet partnered with OLIP on a WOW event, reach out — we’d love to have you join the calendar next June.

Every event, every nomination, and every volunteer hour is part of what makes this week possible.

None of this happens without a lot of people working quietly behind the scenes, and I want to name them here. I want to close by thanking the team that made this launch possible: Nyamulola Kambanji, WOW Project Manager, whose years of strategic partnership shaped this event; Mo, Yusra, and Jean-Pierre, for their tireless work behind the scenes; the WOW working group, our sector tables and Executive Committee, and partners across the city. Special thanks to our funder IRCC and LASI (Local Agencies Serving Immigrants) for their support, and to the volunteers who contributed their time and expertise as well as our caterer and event decorator. Welcoming Ottawa Week doesn’t happen without you. Lastly, I want to thank our two MCs, Sarah Onyango from Rogers TV and Alan Neal from CBC Radio, for hosting the launch of WOW.

Here’s to creating many welcoming stories in our city — built on open minds, open doors, and open hearts.