Ottawa’s parks are strung along two rivers and the canal that joins them. Mooney’s Bay Park and Beach, Hog’s Back Park and Vincent Massey Park hold one bend of the Rideau; Britannia Park and Beach, Rockcliffe Park and the Rockeries and Remic Rapids Park face the Ottawa River; Major’s Hill Park stands on the bluff above the locks where the two meet. Much of that water is man-made: the dam at Hog’s Back raised the river by 12.5 metres, and Dow’s Lake, which Commissioners Park fronts, was a swamp flooded during canal construction.
They differ in scale and purpose. Vincent Massey Park is 29 hectares of meadow and barbecue smoke; Confederation Park packs five memorials into 2.63 hectares of shade; Lansdowne Park puts a stadium, an 1898 exhibition hall and a Sunday market on one block; Britannia sets a supervised beach against 79 hectares of wetland forest, ninety seconds apart. Choose by what the visit turns on: who is with you, what the season is doing, and how you arrive. Commissioners Park and Mooney’s Bay sit beside O-Train stations; Britannia and Rockcliffe mean a bus, bike or car.
At a glance
| # | Place | Score | Reviews | Stands out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mooney's Bay Park and Beach | ⭐ 9.1 | 4 660 | Editors' pick |
| 2 | Hog's Back Park | ⭐ 9.5 | 3 409 | — |
| 3 | Britannia Park and Beach | ⭐ 9.1 | 3 091 | — |
| 4 | Commissioners Park | ⭐ 9.3 | 2 946 | — |
| 5 | Major's Hill Park | ⭐ 9.7 | 2 891 | People's favourite |
| 6 | Confederation Park | ⭐ 9.1 | 2 450 | — |
| 7 | Vincent Massey Park | ⭐ 9.3 | 2 160 | — |
| 8 | Lansdowne Park | ⭐ 9.1 | 2 133 | — |
| 9 | Rockcliffe Park and the Rockeries | ⭐ 9.3 | 1 398 | — |
| 10 | Remic Rapids Park | ⭐ 9.5 | 1 342 | — |
Highlights
-
Editors' pick:
Mooney's Bay Park and Beach -
People's favourite:
Major's Hill Park
Opening hours
Open around the clock: Hog's Back Park, Commissioners Park, Major's Hill Park, Confederation Park, Remic Rapids Park.
Open late: Hog's Back Park, Britannia Park and Beach, Commissioners Park, Major's Hill Park, Confederation Park, Vincent Massey Park, Lansdowne Park, Rockcliffe Park and the Rockeries, Remic Rapids Park.
Open early, from 8am or sooner: Hog's Back Park, Britannia Park and Beach, Commissioners Park, Major's Hill Park, Confederation Park, Vincent Massey Park, Lansdowne Park, Rockcliffe Park and the Rockeries, Remic Rapids Park.
Check the hours before you set out — they shift on holidays and out of season.
Full ranking
1. Mooney's Bay Park and Beach · ⭐ 9.1
(4660 reviews)
+7 photos
2960 Riverside Dr., Ottawa, ON K1V 8N4, Canada
Mooney's Bay is where Ottawa goes when it wants water without leaving town. The bay itself is a broad, slow bend of the Rideau River in the city's south end, and the park wrapped around it manages to hold a supervised sand beach, a national-calibre running track, one of the largest playgrounds in Canada and a floodlit cross-country ski network on a single stretch of riverbank.…
«This is a fantastic park and beach. There's something here for everyone.
There are severa…»
2. Hog's Back Park · ⭐ 9.5
(3409 reviews)
+7 photos
600 Hog's Back Rd, Ottawa, ON K2C 0H9, Canada
Hog's Back is the loudest place in Ottawa that nobody has to pay to enter. This is the point where the Rideau Canal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, breaks away from the Rideau River and heads north through a man-made cut toward the locks below Parliament Hill — and where the river's surplus water is thrown down a rock channel in a white, hammering cascade you can hear before you…
«A great place for a picnic and get-togethers. The park has waterfalls, trees, paths and ot…»
3. Britannia Park and Beach · ⭐ 9.1
(3091 reviews)
+7 photos
2805 Carling Ave, Ottawa, ON K2B 8K6, Canada
Britannia is the rare urban park where you can go swimming, watch a world-class standing wave and walk into old-growth pine forest inside the same hour. It occupies a peninsula in Ottawa's west end where the river broadens into Lac Deschênes, and it comes in two halves that could not be less alike: an open, sandy, deliberately social beach park with a splash pad and barbecue pi…
«A great place for fun with family and friends. The picturesque beauty while walking or sim…»
4. Commissioners Park · ⭐ 9.3
(2946 reviews)
+7 photos
Preston Street and, Queen Elizabeth Driveway, Ottawa, ON K1S 4N7, Canada
For eleven months of the year Commissioners Park is a pleasant 8.95-hectare lawn with mature trees, winding paved paths and a long frontage on Dow's Lake. For about three weeks in May it becomes the single most photographed patch of ground in the capital, because this is where the National Capital Commission plants the largest concentration of tulips in the region — as many as…
«I went there to see the tulips, and it was beautiful. The only inconvenience was that ther…»
5. Major's Hill Park · ⭐ 9.7
(2891 reviews)
+7 photos
Mackenzie Ave, Ottawa, ON K1N 6Z4, Canada
Most cities keep their best view for a private club or a hotel roof. Ottawa gave its away. Major's Hill Park occupies the grassy bluff at exactly the point where the Rideau Canal steps down through its flight of locks into the Ottawa River, and the lawn ends in a railing with the whole postcard laid out beneath it: the Gothic towers of Parliament on one side, the wide grey rive…
«Especially beautiful during the tulip festival in May, Major's Hill Park is a truly wonder…»
6. Confederation Park · ⭐ 9.1
(2450 reviews)
+7 photos
Elgin St, Ottawa, ON K1P 5J2, Canada
Confederation Park is barely 2.63 hectares, which by park standards is a rounding error, and yet more national memory is packed into it than into green space ten times its size. A granite fountain that once played in Trafalgar Square, a twenty-metre totem pole carved on the Pacific coast, a monument to Indigenous veterans, a Boer War soldier in bronze, a memorial to animals tha…
«One of the tourist parks in the very heart of Ottawa. As the name suggests, it's dedicated…»
7. Vincent Massey Park · ⭐ 9.3
(2160 reviews)
+7 photos
Heron Rd, Ottawa, ON K1V 2E4, Canada
Vincent Massey Park is what a public park looked like when a country was feeling confident. Twenty-nine hectares of rolling meadow and mature woodland unfold along the west bank of the Rideau River in Confederation Heights, threaded with paths, dotted with barbecue pits and picnic tables, and anchored by a set of modernist pavilions with canopies shaped like stylized trees. It…
«A spacious, large park filled wall to wall with picnic tables and yes… charcoal grills.…»
8. Lansdowne Park · ⭐ 9.1
(2133 reviews)
+7 photos
1525 Princess Patricia Way, Ottawa, ON K1S 5J3, Canada
Lansdowne Park is not a park in the quiet sense. It is roughly forty acres in the middle of The Glebe, alongside the Rideau Canal, where a professional football stadium, a hockey arena, a Victorian exhibition hall that once hosted Stanley Cup games, a farmers' market with dozens of vendors, an orchard, a skate park and a water plaza all occupy the same block. It has been Ottawa…
«A great place overall. I visited this place last night and had a wonderful experience. The…»
9. Rockcliffe Park and the Rockeries · ⭐ 9.3
(1398 reviews)
+7 photos
Rockcliffe Driveway, Ottawa, ON K1M 2H5, Canada
East of downtown Ottawa the land falls away toward the river in a series of wooded shelves, and this park occupies the finest of them. It is one of the oldest public recreation grounds in the National Capital Region, laid out when Ottawa was still deciding what kind of capital it wanted to be, and it has kept the manners of that era: curving drives that follow the contours, ben…
10. Remic Rapids Park · ⭐ 9.5
(1342 reviews)
+7 photos
Kichi Zībī Mīkan, Ottawa, ON K1A 0K9, Canada
Four kilometres west of Parliament Hill the Ottawa River shallows out over a limestone shelf and breaks into a run of rapids. The shore beside them is a long, low, grassy park with almost nothing built on it — and that emptiness is the point. Since 1986 an artist has come here every summer to stack rocks into human-scale sculptures that stand without glue, cement or wire, held…
Questions & answers
Which place tops the ranking? Mooney's Bay Park and Beach — score 9.1/10 (Editors' pick).
How many places are in the list and how were they chosen? The selection includes 10 places chosen by our editors based on rating and reviews.
What is the average rating in the top? 9.3/10 — average score of 10 places in the list.
Which place has the most reviews? Mooney's Bay Park and Beach — 4660 visitor reviews.
With a small child, Mooney’s Bay Park and Beach does the most: thirteen linked play structures and a shallow supervised shore, both watchable from one table. Runners get a 400-metre track there, and quiet wooded loops at Vincent Massey Park, the one laid out for a big picnic: tables, grills, room to lose a crowd. For stillness, the Rockcliffe lookouts or the balanced stones at Remic Rapids Park in the last hour of light. Winter keeps the list open: lit ski trails at Mooney’s Bay, skating at Dow’s Lake, snowshoes in Britannia’s woods.
Now the limits. These ten follow the rivers and the core, so neighbourhoods away from the water are absent. Nothing here covers off-leash dog ground, pets are barred at Mud Lake and across Vincent Massey, cycling as sport rather than transport is barely covered, and there is no lit evening walking beyond the ski loops. Step-free access is documented at Commissioners Park and Lansdowne, and nowhere else. Hog’s Back Park shuts its services for winter.
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Sources: Google ratings and reviews, official websites and social media of the places, other open data. Selection and texts by the ottawa.name editorial team, August 2026.