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By Carolyn Thompson, Ottawa Citizen
Canoe paddles dipped rhythmically into the water, as the people on board counted out each stroke.
The Ottawa River was filled with boats – from long voyageur canoes with a dozen on board to single kayaks – all filled with people gathered together to celebrate World River Day by canoeing from Victoria Island to Kettle Island alongside the Ottawa Riverkeeper.
“It’s about connecting the communities who live on this river,” Brown told the group of nearly 100 participants before they embarked. “This river of ours is absolutely worth protecting and it needs us all.”
Brown is the organizer of the Great River Project, a summerlong canoe trip down the Ottawa River for water testing and meeting with the people who live on the river’s banks.
Part of the goal is to teach people how to look after the water themselves, she said. “It needs to be communities up and down this river looking after this river,” she said.
The final stretch of the trip, which will take the team from Kettle Island to Montreal, will be the only one done in a motor boat. The distance would be too long for a canoe trip within their time constraints, Brown said.
Sunday’s event, Paddles Up, was designed to engage the community by allowing them to paddle on the river along with the team, and give the crew a powerful sendoff for the last leg of the journey.
For Claudette Commanda, the granddaughter of Algonquin spiritual leader William Commanda, the day was a celebration of her grandfather’s dream and vision. “My grandfather’s message was always one of peace and harmony,” she said. William Commanda died on Aug. 4, and the Great River Project was dedicated to him for his efforts to engage people in the fight for clean water and the protection of the environment.
“The waters are the bloodlines of Mother Earth,” his granddaughter said. In Algonquin tradition, every decision must be weighed with the consequences of seven generations, she told the crowd. “We are borrowing this from our children and their children.”
Larry McDermott, who paddled the first section of the trip with Brown and her team, said it was essential that people work together, across cultures and regions, to protect the river. The member of Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nation has researched the decline of the American Eel in the Ottawa River.
“When you get rid of them, it upsets the balance,” he said. “If we allow the loss of a species … if we’re not taking care of the rivers and lakes, it is horrible.”
The event was designed to help people who don’t normally spend time on the river learn more about its ecosystem and ways to protect it, Brown said, but it was also to build relationships between all those using the water.
For Greg Furlong, the director of the Ottawa choir Just Voices, it did just that. He said he and a group of choir members first became interested in the river when a choir member suggested they learn old trader songs that would have been sung while paddling canoes down the river centuries ago.
The choir decided to give the canoeing a try, and sing while they paddled.
“We’re the fastest canoe,” he said, because the songs give them a steady rhythm. “It gets people to work together.”
Nat-o-we, the First Nations elder of Kettle Island, said Furlong was right – it was common to sing while paddling in his culture, and in the culture of the fur traders.
“Today it’s important to bring those cultures back together again, and become one,” he said.
“What we also have to do is respect and understand the whole river.”
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