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The dream of making the upper Ottawa River more navigable to boaters officially becomes reality this morning when a ribbon is snipped for the Chat’s Dam bypass.
The ceremony, expected to be attended by Mayor Bob Chiarelli and various municipal officials, will mark an end to a difficult and costly project that has generated fierce community opposition.
The goal of the project is simple enough: Develop the tourism economy along the Ottawa River by allowing boaters to cruise the 500 kilometres of the river from Britannia Bay at Ottawa to Lake Temiskaming in the north. To do that, five boat bypasses were created in the 1990s to take boats out of the water in parts of the river that cannot be traversed. A sixth boat bypass was proposed for Fitzroy Harbour near Ottawa to complete the system down to Ottawa.
But many residents of Fitzroy Harbour were furious at the prospect of trucks, boats and trailers trundling through their quiet residential streets.
And environmentalists, such as the Ottawa Riverkeeper, objected to the prospect of the bypass going through either Fitzroy Provincial Park, the ecologically significant Morris Island Conservation Area or the Willola Beach area.
The Ottawa Riverkeeper, an ecological watchdog agency for the Ottawa River, voiced concerns about the project starting in 2003, including fears that the launch sites could pose “significant risks” to the ecosystem along the shoreline.
The people behind the Ottawa River Project Inc. agreed to change the plan and go with a launch at Mohr’s Landing, where the Quyon Ferry operates.
They purchased a lot on the Ferry Road, next to the Quyon Ferry dock, installed a ramp, did the engineering work and bought four-wheel-drive vehicles and hydraulic lifts to haul the boats.
Boaters heading from Ottawa can boat to Mohr’s Landing, across from Quyon, be hauled out of the water and driven 16 kilometres, then launched back into the river above the Chat’s Dam. There are five other such lifts along the river to the west.
The bypasses cost boaters $500 for a season’s pass or $50 per lift. The service can move boats of up to 30 feet, but cannot transport sailboats with large fixed keels or big masts.
Due to the early false starts on locations that were dropped after engineering problems, environmental or neighbourhood objections, the sixth boat lift project has cost $2.3 million, including $1.2 million for the current route.
The capital costs for the bypass project have been covered by many different organizations, including Ontario Power Generation, the provincial and federal governments and the City of Ottawa, which recently contributed $350,000.
Projections for boat traffic are modest in the initial years: about 500 lifts expected per year. Some people view it as an extraordinary waste of money.
But the project has enthusiastic boosters.
“It’s been a long time coming,” says former West Carleton mayor and regional councillor Roly Armitage. He said there are 1,600 boats in the Ottawa River around the City of Ottawa, but they’ve got “nowhere to go” because of the falls along the river.
He and his wife went with friends on a boat trip along the upper Ottawa River three years ago and he said they were amazed. “The beauty of the Ottawa River is the best kept secret in North America,” said Mr. Armitage.
“There’s incredible potential,” said Dwight Eastman, another former municipal politician in West Carleton. He said the final bypass to Ottawa will open up the Ottawa River to boaters who are along the Rideau waterway. Mr. Eastman said the next big challenge is to do marketing and communications, and make personal contact with boaters, so that the boat bypasses get used.
Donald Gagnon, chairman of the Ottawa River Waterway, said boaters spend a lot of money when they visit communities and he’s hoping the volume of boaters along the Ottawa can be doubled. He said boaters who are accustomed to the more crowded Rideau River should give the Ottawa a try.
“We have a wonderful waterway, wide open, and we don’t have a lot of boat traffic,” said Mr. Gagnon.
Ottawa Councillor Eli El-Chantiry, who represents West Carleton on Ottawa City Council, said he’s happy that the boat bypass issue is finally resolved after years of debate and many false starts with routes that didn’t work out.
Fellow Councillor Maria McRae said she supported the project because it opens up a whole new level of tourism market for the Ottawa region.
Gary Wiseman, who has worked on the boat bypass project since the 1990s, said this last bypass only adds 50 kilometres of navigable water to the Ottawa River waterway for boaters, but it is a critically important piece for boating tourism because it adds the capital as a destination.
Britannia Bay to Lake Temiskaming