Building Canada’s largest community woodshop to empower city dwellers to tap into dormant creativity and build with their hands.

Using our hands and learning new skills is a critical part of being a well-rounded and healthy human, but for many of Ottawa’s residents today it’s intimidating, inaccessible, and simply impractical. Despite the city’s current white-collar image, it was founded as a lumber town and at one point in time was home to the largest lumber operation in the entire world.

With the Ottawa City Woodshop, we set out to rediscover Ottawa’s history while making woodworking approachable, and accessible to its urban population. We launched the Ottawa City Woodshop in 2015, and watched it quickly become Canada’s largest community woodshop having now welcomed thousands of students and members through its doors to learn new skills, and experience lifelong changes to their confidence in creating with their hands.