October 25, 2026
Why I Set My Near-Future Fiction in Ottawa
Storyteller’s Journal | Anthony Ezisi
Silicon Valley is where you set a story about disruption; Ottawa is where you set a story about stewardship.
That distinction explains a great deal about why I chose Ottawa for my speculative fiction.
When people imagine the future of technology, they often picture places known for ambitious start-ups and inventions that promise to change everything. Ottawa interests me for a different reason. Here, a new idea has to make sense beyond the laboratory. It has to contend with winter weather, ageing infrastructure, the needs of different communities and the institutions responsible for public decisions.
There is a simpler reason too: I live in Orléans. I know its streets, parks and seasons. When you tell stories about the future, it helps to begin somewhere you understand.
An Orléans garage, not a futuristic laboratory
Orléans is part of Ottawa, but to me it feels like a community with an identity of its own. Many residential neighbourhoods have schools, playgrounds and parks close to home. You see families out walking and children spending time together. It is the kind of place where people can put down roots.
That sense of community helped shape The Gardener’s Awakening. Ebuka Eze grows up in Orléans, and his journey begins with his friends and a neglected school garden. Before the scientific questions become large, there are ordinary things in front of him that need attention.
I did not reproduce a particular street or school. The fictional neighbourhood is intentionally generic, although readers familiar with Orléans may recognize a little of the area nearer the Ottawa River and the transit corridor.
One detail, however, came from something I had noticed repeatedly: how families use their garages.
In Orléans, I have seen garages turned into workshops and places for children’s activities. When I was deciding where Ebuka would experiment with technology, I considered the basement. The garage felt more natural. It was an ordinary part of suburban life that could plausibly become an extraordinary workspace.
I like the idea that something important might begin in a place most neighbours walk past without a second thought.
What an Ottawa winter can teach you
Anyone who has spent time in Ottawa knows that winter has a way of testing plans.
Around January 2024, freezing rain left my driveway coated in ice. Against my better judgement, I drove to work. While I was on the highway, sheets of ice came off a moving truck and shattered my windshield. It was a frightening experience, and it changed an ordinary journey in an instant.
I have also lived through storm-related power outages. Most have been restored reasonably quickly, but some lasted for hours. You start worrying about the food in the refrigerator. The home internet is gone. If the disruption spreads, communications may become less dependable too.
What struck me was how quickly a problem with one service affected several parts of daily life.
Before moving to Orléans, I lived in an older apartment building elsewhere in Ottawa. I experienced longer outages there than I generally have in my newer suburban neighbourhood. That is my experience, not a rule about every part of the city. Still, the contrast stayed with me.
It also shaped how I imagined The Expropriation Winter, the first novel in The Laurentian Fault series. In that story, Ottawa must respond to a climate-displacement emergency while facing enormous demands for shelter, transportation, water, electricity and heat. The emergency is fictional, but the way essential services depend on one another is familiar.
The real Ottawa is already planning for changing conditions. The City of Ottawa’s climate-resilience information points to hotter summers, more freeze–thaw cycles and heavier rainfall as future concerns. None of that tells us exactly what the city will look like decades from now, but it gives a storyteller plenty to think about.
A capital city where technology must answer to people
Ottawa is also a place where research and public institutions sit close to ordinary neighbourhood life. A model developed in a university laboratory might eventually raise questions that reach City Hall, federal institutions or communities far from the capital.
That relationship between technology and responsibility is central to The Gardener’s Awakening.
In the novel, the fictional Ottawa Shield is designed to help anticipate climate-related pressures and identify where assistance may be needed. One of the difficult questions is whether a predictive model can mistake a history of services delivered for a measure of who needs help most.
It is possible to build an impressive system that answers the wrong question.
I have noticed contrasts between Ottawa neighbourhoods, including places such as Kanata Lakes and Vanier. They have different histories, housing and living conditions. I do not want to turn every story into a debate about those differences, but they remind me that people can experience the same city in very different ways.
For me, the value of a future technology lies partly in whether it improves life for the people who need it. Accuracy matters. So does the way a society chooses to use the information.
A community garden is a place to start
The school garden in The Gardener’s Awakening may seem small compared with the problems the characters later encounter. That is precisely why I wanted it there.
Caring for a garden means noticing something that could be better, then doing the work. Maintaining a city asks for that same sense of responsibility on a much larger scale. Both involve people acting on behalf of others, including those who will come after them.
I believe this planet has been entrusted to us, and that we should take care of it for the next generation. Technology should be designed to serve people and improve their lives, not exploit them. Even when choices are difficult, we should try to protect people and seek the best outcome available.
We often want to begin with a grand solution. I think there is value in beginning with what is within reach. As the saying goes, little drops of water make an ocean.
That belief connects the world of The Gardener with The Laurentian Fault. One explores how people build towards change; the other asks how they respond when the systems protecting daily life are under severe strain.
The Ottawa I hope to see in 2050
I do not expect Ottawa to become a completely different city in twenty or thirty years. I do have hopes for what might improve.
I would like public transit to be reliable enough that people can depend on it. I hope the city uses more green technology, prepares better for climate extremes and finds practical ways to grow more food locally, including through greenhouses. I would also like public services and new technologies to pay closer attention to people’s actual needs.
Those hopes are not entirely separate from present-day planning. Ottawa’s Climate Change Master Plan describes a long-term transition towards a cleaner, more resilient city. Its 15-minute neighbourhood approach emphasizes bringing everyday amenities closer to residents. Plans, of course, still have to become lived reality.
And I doubt bureaucracy will disappear. Projects will still meet delays, institutions will disagree and good ideas will still encounter practical limits. A convincing future needs those complications.
That is why the Ottawa in my stories is a mixture of hope and difficulty. I can imagine better tools and stronger communities without assuming that technology will resolve every human problem.
Why I keep coming back to Ottawa
Ottawa gives me room to move between the intimate and the enormous. I can begin with a family trying to establish itself, children tending a school garden or a young person working in a suburban garage. From there, a story can reach the Rideau River, a university laboratory, Parliament Hill or the Canadian North.
The city is familiar enough for me to picture everyday life and connected enough to suggest much larger consequences.
I do not know what Ottawa will look like in 2050. I hope it remains a place where families can build their lives, neighbourhoods have a sense of community and new ideas are judged, at least in part, by the good they do for people.
That is the Ottawa I know, the Ottawa I hope for and the Ottawa I return to as a storyteller.
Explore the stories behind these reflections: The Gardener’s Foundation, The Gardener’s Awakening, The Expropriation Winter.