Ottawa Turned 200: Cook a Bytown-Era Recipe With Your Kids Before the October 2 PA Day

• 28.09.2026

Ottawa celebrated its 200th birthday on Saturday, September 26, 2026, two centuries after the founding of Bytown. The City’s official Ottawa 200 Block Party filled Marion Dewar Plaza at City Hall from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. with a family zone, hands-on activities and local food vendors, and OC Transpo buses and the O-Train were free all weekend. Families who want to keep the bicentennial going can cook a recipe printed in Upper Canada in 1831, five years after Bytown began. The next free weekday for it is Friday, October 2: a PA day with no school at both the OCDSB and the OCSB.

What happened on Ottawa 200 Day

Ottawa 200 Day was the city’s official bicentennial and the peak of a year of Ottawa 200 events, according to Ottawa Tourism. Much of the programming was free, and the block party was designed for all ages.

• Town crier Daniel Richer opened the day at Marion Dewar Plaza, and Greg Sarazin, Chief of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation, spoke about the much older Algonquin history of the land (CBC News).
• The block party ran family fun and art zones, food and drink vendors, live music and an OC Transpo “transit museum”.
• The Bytown Museum held a free day, Ottawa 200+ Bytown Together, and Nuit Blanche ran downtown from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

A Bytown-era recipe kids can cook this week

The Cook Not Mad, or Rational Cookery was printed in Kingston, Upper Canada, by J. Macfarlane in 1831, and a scan of the original is free to read on Canadiana. Its recipe No. 128, Sugar Gingerbread, is a rolled cookie dough, an easy first history project for kids:

“One pound of flour, one pound of sugar, six ounces of butter, four eggs, add pearlash and ginger, made hard and rolled out.”

The Cook Not Mad, Kingston, 1831, recipe No. 128, p. 40

The recipe lists ingredients only, with no oven temperature or baking time. Pearlash was an early chemical leavening, so an adult swaps in a modern one such as baking soda and runs the oven.

The same book has Common Pancakes (No. 150): eggs, flour and milk, served “with sugar grated on”. Kids mix; the stove stays with an adult.

Themed cooking workshops for schools, day camps and teams

A themed cooking workshop is a one-time hands-on class where every child cooks a dish built around one idea, such as a season, a holiday or a local anniversary. Cookiddoo runs one-time workshops for Ottawa schools, daycares, community centres and day camps, and a kids cooking station at company family days. When you book, we help choose the menu, the drink and the theme.

• Ages 4 to 15; up to 10 children per instructor, an assistant from 11, up to 30 per session.
• 45 to 90 minutes depending on age; a no-cook format needs tables only.
• Food Handler certified instructors and nut-free protocols.

Pricing depends on group size and format. See cooking programs for schools and daycares, educational cooking workshops, community centres and camps and the corporate family day cooking station.

Fall 2026 no-school days in Ottawa

The next no-school day at Ottawa’s English public and Catholic boards is Friday, October 2, 2026, per the OCDSB and OCSB calendars.

PA Day Camps are one of our cooking camp themes for ages 7–13, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., up to 11 kids. Call us to check the October 2 format and open spots. Day camps running their own PA-day program can book a workshop at their site.