Ottawa Senators Foundation

Lore & Background

Ottawa carries a hockey lineage that stretches back to the 1880s, when the original Senators took the ice as one of the sport's earliest organized clubs. That club would endure, through leagues and reorganizations, until 1954, leaving behind a cultural scar in the city's identity. When the NHL returned the Senators name to Ottawa in 1992 as an expansion franchise, the community's hunger for a team was immediate and almost reverent. The Foundation grew out of that same hunger—not just for wins, but for a hockey culture that belonged to every neighbourhood, every school, every kid who could afford a pair of skates or couldn't.

In the years since, the Foundation has become a quiet institution in Ottawa's civic life. It is the organization that shows up at a suburban school to hand out a puck and a stick, that opens a community rink on a Saturday morning when the Canadian Tire Centre is dark, that pairs a young player with a mentor from the team's alumni. Fans who follow the Senators through the long, sometimes painful stretches of the 1990s and 2000s often speak of the Foundation as the reason they stayed: the team might not have made the playoffs, but the Foundation was still putting a kid on ice in a small-town arena forty minutes south of the city.

The name itself carries weight in the capital. The Senate of Canada sits a few blocks from the arena, and the Senators moniker has always been a point of local affection and mild, playful rivalry with the city's political establishment. The Foundation channels that civic pride into something tangible: a child learning to skate, a community centre hosting a charity game, a neighbourhood that feels the team is *theirs* in a way that transcends a jersey on a shelf.

In Their Own Story

A November Saturday, the kind where the sky over the Ottawa River hangs low and grey. The Canadian Tire Centre is quiet, the boards still, the Zamboni parked in the corner. But in the east concourse, a long table is set up with a stack of pucks, a box of junior sticks, and a red-and-black banner that reads simply: *Senators Foundation – Learn to Skate*. A mother kneels, lacing the boots of a five-year-old who keeps trying to stand up. A volunteer in a Senators warm-up jacket crouches beside the kid and says, "Just push, just push, you don't have to be fast." The kid pushes. Falls. Laughs. Pushes again. Somewhere above them, the arena lights hum in that particular fluorescent buzz that every hockey fan in Ottawa knows by heart. The game is not on TV tonight. The game is a five-year-old finding her balance on a patch of ice in the capital of Canada, and the Foundation is the reason the ice is there.

Reader's Guide

The Canadian Tire Centre, the Senators' home since the late 1990s, is a mid-size NHL arena nestled in the south end of Ottawa, a short drive from the Rideau Canal and the Parliament buildings. The building carries the familiar NHL layout: a 200-level bowl, a premium club level, and a concourse that smells faintly of maple syrup and cold air. The ice surface is standard 200-by-85 feet, and the boards still carry the red-and-black Senators branding that has been a fixture since the franchise's return in 1992.

Fan rituals here are understated compared to some markets. The "O-TTA-WA" chant rises in unison during key moments, and the crowd swells on power plays with a collective exhale that fans describe as almost parliamentary in its deliberateness. After the final buzzer, whether the result is a win or a loss, the tradition is to stay, to sit in the cold air of the stands, and to let the team skate a few laps. It is a small, unscripted moment of solidarity.

The Foundation weaves itself into this culture through Saturday-morning learn-to-skate sessions, school visits, and community rink days in outlying towns like Kanata, Orleans, and the rural municipalities south of the city. Local culture integration is natural: Ottawa is a city of institutions, of civic duty, and the Senators—named for the Senate, the capital's defining symbol—fit that identity seamlessly. The Foundation is the civic duty made visible: a stick in a kid's hands, a puck on the ice, a community that shows up.

Did You Know?

• The original Ottawa Senators club was founded in 1883, making it one of the oldest continuously named hockey clubs in North American history, predating the NHL by decades.
• Ottawa is the capital of Canada, and the Senators' name is a direct nod to the Senate of Canada, which sits just a few blocks from the team's arena.
• The modern Ottawa Senators entered the NHL as an expansion franchise in 1992, ending a long period in which the city had no major professional hockey team.
• The Foundation's community programming extends well beyond the city limits, reaching youth hockey players in rural towns and small communities across the broader Ottawa region.