Teaching a different story of Ottawa

Less than a 10-minute walk from Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the Lord Elgin Hotel stands across the road from the solemn stare of the National Aboriginal Veterans Monument. For Jaime Morse, that juxtaposition feels conflicting.

The monument was built as a tribute to the Indigenous Peoples who served in the Canadian Armed Forces, while the hotel serves to honour Lord Elgin — a pre-Confederation governor general who signed off on an 1850 law that would form the Indian Act.

“To see the war monument across from [the hotel] is like a wave of constant spiritual battling happening across the street from each other,” Morse said.

The spot is a prominent stop on Morse’s tour of Ottawa. Morse, who is Métis from Alberta, is the founder of Indigenous Walks, a company that has led walking tours through the city for about a decade. She said she hopes to offer a new perspective on the nation’s capital.

“Some people will see a space that's feeling neutral to them until they hear more history,” Morse said. “I want them to have a little bit more information and to form an opinion based on new understandings.”

Morse came to Ottawa in 2000 as a Canadian studies student at Carleton University. After graduating, she decided to become an educator. She taught courses in Indigenous studies at Carleton, the University of Ottawa and Algonquin College.

In 2013, Morse said she remembers taking a “Haunted Walk” — a popular walking tour that shares Ottawa’s ghost stories with sightseers.

“They're great, but I also was thinking about all of the Indigenous stories behind every stop,” Morse said. “I felt inspired. This is something I can do. I can walk around and tell stories about the things that I picked up on.”

Two months later, she hosted her first tour through Jane’s Walk, a group that connects community guides with sightseers for a walking tour festival each year. The walk was free. Morse said far too many people showed up. “It was an accident. I didn't know how popular it was going to be,” she added.

In 2014, she went independent as Indigenous Walks and gave her first paid tour to a high school group.

“It really just immediately took off because that became my full-time job,” Morse said.

She hired a few more tour guides to help her out. Morse started to charge $15 to $30 per person for a tour. She said it helped provide for her family in between contract jobs until she secured a full-time position as an educator at the National Gallery of Canada.

Her daughter started to give tours through the business. At its peak, Morse said Indigenous Walks had five guides and was able to offer tours in four languages. It primarily offered tours to schools and corporate clients who wanted to learn more about the nation’s capital from an Indigenous person’s perspective.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Indigenous Walks was put on pause. Morse focused on her full-time work until the city opened up again. She let her business website expire, but Morse still runs tours through Indigenous Walks.

“It's by word of mouth,” she said. “If I'm able to do it, then I will because I truly enjoy giving the tours and I enjoy meeting people and I enjoy seeing people's faces when they’re really thinking.”

Now, Indigenous Walks only has Morse as a tour guide. But she’s still looking for more ways to host tours. She’s working with a member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation to start his own walking tour company to offer insights into the city built on his traditional homelands. And she’s considering expansion to other cities, like Edmonton and Winnipeg.

But for now, Indigenous Walks continues to operate in Ottawa.

“It's something to do that's physically active. It touches on your emotions, it gets you thinking,” Morse said. “It's Indigenous People's testimonies that I'm talking about and that (guests) are witnessing, and in a way, they're actively practising reconciliation when they take my tour.”

Isaac Phan Nay / Canada’s National Observer / Local Journalism Initiative