Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
When I talk about paddling in downtown Ottawa and Gatineau, the question most people ask is: Why?
With so many wilderness lakes and rivers within easy driving distance of the capital, why kayak or canoe in the city?
I suppose the main reason is that the nation’s capital, already one of the most beautiful cities in the world, is even prettier from the water. The view from the Ottawa River behind Parliament Hill is especially breath-taking. On the Quebec side, you have the sinuous lines of the Museum of Civilization. On the Ontario side, the angular National Gallery perches on Nepean Point, while the neo-Gothic Parliament Buildings look down on you from their 60-metre-high hill. Meanwhile, the Ottawa’s inky waters, streaked with foam from Chaudière Falls just upstream, roil and churn around you.
Another good reason for paddling downtown is that the urban core, with three rivers, three lakes, a good-size creek and a canal, offers a wide variety of routes.
My favourite route runs from the locks at the foot of Parliament Hill up the Rideau Canal to Carleton University. A portage across campus takes you to the Rideau River, which you then follow down to its confluence with the Ottawa. A short paddle up the Ottawa brings you back to the locks.
The route is 19 kilometres long, and Citizen columnist Susan Riley and I recently paddled, portaged and picnicked our way around it in five hours.
The most challenging portage is around Rideau Falls. When I first paddled this route 13 years ago, I portaged from the Rideau River down to a cove on the Ottawa just east of 24 Sussex Drive. Looking up at the modest railing that guarded the Prime Minister’s residence on that side, I wondered why no deranged taxpayer had ever climbed up from the cove to surprise the prime minister at home.
A few weeks later, someone did just that, and now the access road down to the cove is strictly off limits.
After the Canada and the World Pavilion beside Rideau Falls closed, I used its service road to get down to the Ottawa River. But a security guard shooed Susan and me away when we tried to use it on our recent trip, and we had to make a long detour and ignore a No Trespassing sign to complete our portage.
Restricted access to public waterways is perhaps the greatest obstacle facing urban paddlers. From the Laurier Bridge to the Bronson Bridge, metre-high railings run down both sides of the canal, making it difficult to pull out or put in. Clegg Street, about halfway between Parliament Hill and Carleton University, offers a handy portage over to the Rideau River. But it was always a challenge to coax my late friend Brutus (a 90-pound German shepherd) to crawl up out of our canoe and under the bottom rail, while I hauled the canoe over the top rail, all under the eyes of bemused diners on the patio of the Canal Ritz across the water.
The great thing about urban portages is that they’re almost all paved. Kayaks aren’t designed to be carried on the shoulders, and supporting a kayak on your head is hard on the neck, so I have wheels that slip under mine and make urban portaging a breeze. When not in use, the wheels sit atop my kayak, held in place by bungee webbing. Almost all the urban rapids have bike paths beside them, making them easy to reconnoitre before you shoot them.
And city lights make it easy to navigate in the dark. Until last summer, I belonged to a golf club on Aylmer Road and not infrequently paddled home to New Edinburgh after sundown.
Good water shoes make urban kayaking more enjoyable. They should have semi-rigid, patterned soles for grip and protection and mesh uppers for quick drainage. Neoprene boots offer warmth at the beginning and end of the season, but your feet can overheat and blister if you wear them over the longer downtown portages in warm weather.
The portage around Chaudière Falls, for example, is a kilometre long on the Ontario side, along a bike path from below the Mill Restaurant to the War Museum. The portage on the Quebec side is even longer.
An alternate route around the falls, with more frequent but shorter portages, is Brewery Creek, which branches off from the Ottawa just above the falls and then rejoins the Ottawa opposite Rideau Falls, making downtown Hull an island. As always, I scouted that route on my bike before paddling it, but it was still reassuring that, the first two times I went down it, people whose backyards run down to the creek called out to warn me of the rapids ahead.
The long portage up and around Chaudière Falls is worth the effort, though, because you’ll have the eight-kilometre stretch of water from there west to the Deschênes Rapids (near Aylmer, Que.) virtually to yourself. Be warned, though, that, besides beavers, herons and other wildlife, the dearth of water traffic also attracts a good number of naked humans, who bask in the sun on the riverside ledges below the University of Quebec.
One final plus of urban paddling is that food and beverages, and just about anything else you may need, are seldom more than a short walk away. Paddling up to my golf club, I would often pause for a coffee at the Bistro Renoir, on the appropriately named Promenade du Portage. And during our recent circumnavigation of downtown Ottawa, Susan and I stopped for provisions at the Tim Hortons on the Carleton University campus.
If you’re too far from water to portage comfortably from home, you can put in at the Hull Marina in Jacques Cartier Park or the Dows Lake Pavilion, among other places. Both spots offer parking for a fee. You can also rent kayaks and canoes of various models at Dows Lake, for between $10 and $17 for the first hour and $8 for every hour after that.
Richard Oslund is a federal government translator who has been paddling around Ottawa for a quarter-century.
(C) Ottawa Citizen