Time to check out the beach.
Beaches are partly what summer is about. We’re not a beach city per se.
Ottawa didn’t grow up on a lake or ocean, which explains why you’ll never see a T-shirt saying: “Ottawa: Eastern Ontario’s swaggering water playground.”
We’re not much of a river city either. Ever since the loggers shipped out, the Rideau and Ottawa rivers are mostly used for tour boat rides. Haven’t seen a decent-sized tanker in years.
Runners like our rivers on humid days. We daydream about how refreshing it might be to dunk our heads in the water and not wind up with a face-disfiguring disease from the pollution. Water, water everywhere …
Beaches, however, conjure up an array of glorious images. Soft sand, castles, holes deep enough to bury a kid to his waist. Frisbee-tossing in the shallow water. Rolling off an air mattress then diving to pinch a friend’s legs, pretending to be a scary water creature.
So off I went to Petrie Island in search of any of these. When my children were children and it was acceptable for them not to replace the spent toilet-paper roll, Petrie wasn’t on our radar. I knew it existed as a spot to moor a boat or be at one with frogs, but otherwise, what?
It became best known for where the Stuemer family began and ended their four-year circumnavigation of the globe in a sailboat.
Britannia had its beach. Mooney’s Bay, too. Out east? Nothing.
Finally, in 2002, city council voted to create the municipal park and it officially opened in 2005.
These days, Petrie Island is a rough-hewn jewel, to be appreciated for its delicate melding of nature with the basic amenities of the modern world. In a word, charming.
The city has created an idyllic spot: quiet, sparkling clean, and free of chip wagons (though water fountains would be a nice touch). There’s ample parking for the bargain rate of $2 for five hours.
The beaches are soft and spacious, supervised by city lifeguards, and steps from treed areas and backwaters where wildlife remains undisturbed. You can travel its five kilometres of wooded trails or spend a few minutes in the nature centre that even has second-hand paperbacks to sell. Volunteers maintain the nature area.
The island is dotted with portable toilets, but a proper indoor facility is planned. There are no fast food outlets and so precious few smelly garbage canisters. If you bring food, bring your own garbage bag and leave the place as pristine as when you got there.
It lacks just three key ingredients: swimmable water, marketing, and non-car access.
Since the obvious payoff to a beach is water, Petrie suffers from the same problems as its sister beaches. Even when the water is deemed safe (it’s tested daily), one swims hesitantly. The carefree dunking you’d see at a lake seems, at Petrie, a bit less so.
It’s almost as if beach-goers figure the fifth dunk of five is liable to make them sick, so the first four are fine, then head for shore. Everyone is probably well aware of the water’s source.
Secondly, try to find Petrie Island on the city’s website. It’s not listed under parks or recreation facilities. Even using the search engine produces old city documents or sketchy information. Fortunately, the island has its own excellent website at www.fallingbrook.com/petrieisland . Surely the city can fix the silly omission.
Finally, getting there without a car is tricky. Located on the north side of Highway 174 and linked by a narrow dirt road causeway, Petrie may not be a place you tell young kids to run off to for the day.
The closest bus stop is at the Trim Road park and ride. OC Transpo has no immediate plan to go onto the island because of the dirt road and lack of a turnaround place for buses. So you have to traverse the 174, which, despite the stoplight, is still a highway. It’s more than 1.5 kilometres from the park and ride to the beach. Once across the highway, there’s no sidewalk or path.
It’s fine to promote fitness through walking or biking. But it’s asking a lot to expect people to make that trek without so much as a designated walkway.
These are somewhat minor issues. Petrie Island remains an oasis in the suburban cement desert. Better still, there’s no WiFi.
Richard Bercuson is an Ottawa teacher and writer.