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Over the next nine weekends, on the fairest of days that draw people to the water’s edge, stretches of the Rideau River will boil with moments of boating mayhem.
News that two boats collided and injured three people June 9, with one of the boats pulling a wakeboarder, shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows the river. This time, nobody was seriously hurt or worse, but what truly is astonishing is that crashes like it don’t happen more often.
I’m a fairly regular user of the Long Reach section of the Rideau that slices through south rural Ottawa. And I’ve seen too much dangerous, foolish, mind-boggling behaviour, sometimes even a water brand of road rage. It can come from whooping thrill-seekers hopping wakes of passing boats to jet skiers weaving between canal cruisers without attention to traffic ahead. And that’s just what I happened to see.
We’ve lost count of the near-swamped fishing boats and canoeists. Children and baby ducks swim at their own risk.
Hold fire please. I am not interested in sucking the fun out of youthful summer days. The Rideau, after all, has been a playground longer than a military backdoor.
But there are places and there are times for the power crowd, and it is no longer the Rideau. It hasn’t been for a few years now. Never mind that it was engineered as a 19th-century conduit, like a road designed for the slow and deliberate movement of people and goods.
Today, speed trumps all. Power reins supreme. All other mortals are mere markers for the skiers.
I fish out of a 14-foot boat, which makes me, in the eyes of the power fiends, a buoy, a river cone to zigzag around.
Not that every angler has a claim to a halo. With the opening of bass season, the platform boats will make their appearance, equipped with enough horsepower to light a small town. They’ll plane the stretches of the Long Reach between Manotick and Burritts Rapids, grimly tuning up for the tournament season.
Meanwhile, the kayakers and canoeists, hopelessly seeking a tranquil paddle, bob precariously along the river’s edge, trying to remain far enough away from the bank to avoid being pushed into the shore from repeated wakes.
Toss us all into the recreational blender that is the Rideau waterway and you needn’t be a chef to guess what recipe results.
It’s all about space, or the lack of it. The Rideau doesn’t have the breadth big-water boaters need. It’s a limited navigable waterway unsuited to high speed and acrobatics. They don’t belong there. Haven’t for years.
In the wake of the June 9 crash, police said the part of the river near Prince of Wales Drive and Merivale Road where the crash happened sometimes gets busy during weekends, but accidents are “very rare.”
Statistically, that is probably true. The books, though, never show the near-misses, light glances or even actual collisions that result in little or light damage and no injuries.
I surrendered the battle three summers ago. Loud and powerful beat me. I avoid weekend fishing in July and August unless a weekend visitor or a vacationing guest coaxes me out on a death wish. I am immensely fortunate in that I have summers off, so I can fish during the quieter weekdays.
The majority of small boaters and swimmers don’t have that good fortune, however. Unless they are among the lucky souls who reside on the river, they are boxed into boating on the death-defying weekends.
Governments noticed, and long ago tried to make the Rideau more attuned to passive use. There are wake and speed restrictions, boat licensing, and safety campaigns. They exist unenforced and largely ignored.
Liquor infractions get a lot of attention, but marine patrols are spotty because, as we know, police can’t be in all places all the time.
Horsepower restrictions on craft smaller than a house boat or cruiser haven’t been tried yet. It has worked well on inland lakes that have such designations, some with a fraction of the boat traffic the Rideau sees. Signs at launches could alert the speed demons and acrobats to move on to a big water body more akin to their sport, the Big Rideau or the Ottawa River to name a few within trailering distance.
In the meantime, here we go again. Keep all hands in the boat, and fingers and toes crossed. Pray we won’t hear about another preventable accident that begins with a need for speed and ends with a need for an ambulance.
Joe Banks is a former Ottawa area community newspaper publisher and editor and teaches at Algonquin College.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007