It's not all Toronto however. As the center of Canadian government as well as a border city to Quebec, Ottawa lights up the northern sky with an eclectic tech mix all its own. While the Canadian economy grew by 4.7 percent last year, Ottawa's grew by 6.5 percent, led by the surging successes of tech companies, many of them located at Kanata Research Park and North Tech Campus. Today, more than 1,000 high-tech companies call Ottawa home. And the new companies keep coming. The latest startup star is SiGEM Inc., maker of GPS-based vehicle location tracking systems, which was named "Hottest Startup" by Canadian business magazine Profit. Like COM DEV, this company is involved in establishing the core of a wireless infrastructure that could spell the beginning of the next wave for Silicon Valley North.
      Real estate confidence in Ottawa has not been shaken by Nortel's or any other company's travails. The World Exchange Plaza office towers were recently purchased from Toronto-Dominion Bank for more than $64 million by Penreal Capital Management. A nearly complete 16-story tower is almost completely pre-leased. In 2000, according to J.J. Barnicke, building permits in the region exceeded $639 million for the first time in 10 years, and construction began on 2.7 million sq. ft. (251,000 sq. m.) of office space.
      Meanwhile, city officials are pushing to be the choice for a premier project: the National Research Council's $29 million Canadian Photonics Fabrication Center, which will create around 2,300 jobs and is projected to inject some $537 million into the local economy in its first decade of prototype development. It's a natural fit, as the optical electronics field already employs around 13,500 people in the area at more than 80 companies.
      Referring to the sector's broad base in the province, Brian Gordon says "it covers the waterfront," noting that one reason Ontario's tech firms ought to be fine in the long run is their lack of focus on the personal computer and their forward focus on progressive wireless technologies.