Canadian infidelity is alive and thriving in the hotbed of cheating, Ottawa

The World
The homepage of the Ashley Madison website is displayed on an iPad, in this photo illustration taken in Ottawa, Canada July 21, 2015.

Ashley Madison is a website which helps users cheat on their partners. Hackers recently broke into the website, revealing customer details online.

One thing they didn't expect?

The high number of users in Ottawa.

Yes, the rather prim capital of Canada is — as cable TV might say — "a hotbed of infidelity."

More than 189,000 Ottawans used the website. That's one in five residents of the city.

The news has been good for some people, like John Sullivan, who knows a thing or two about infidelity. He runs the Triangle Investigation Agency, a team of private investigators specializing in matrimonial surveillance.

"Business is wonderful," he says. "It hasn't been better in the 33 years Triangle has been around."

Sullivan says the business is pretty simple. "If you suspect your spouse is cheating, then you hire Triangle and we go out and prove it. We prove the adultery situation, or even if they are just seeing someone or having dinner with someone. We prove that type of thing."

Ashley Madison is well known to Sullivan. But he's surprised that only one in five residents in Ottawa use it. He thought it would be way higher, given the divorce rate. He says 20 percent of his client base is familiar with the website.

So what is it about Ottawa that attracts cheaters?

Sullivan says nothing. He's traveled across the world snooping for cheats, and learned about the goings on of illicit affairs. Thus, he can drop this knowledge: It’s about the same wherever you go.

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