Posted: October 27, 2025
Ottawa Riverkeeper Joins the Swimmable Cities Alliance
On June 22, 2025, Ottawa Riverkeeper proudly became a signatory to the Swimmable Cities Charter, joining a global movement that champions the right to swim and celebrates urban swimming culture.
The Swimmable Cities Alliance brings together organizations, experts, and advocates working to ensure that urban waterways are safe, healthy, and accessible for all. It is made up of nearly 200 organizations and spans over 100 cities and towns in 34 countries. By signing the charter, Ottawa Riverkeeper has affirmed our belief that everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy swimmable rivers, lakes, and shorelines, and we commit to protecting and restoring these precious waterways for future generations.
The Charter is built around ten common principles, which include the right to swim, recognition of water as sacred, the promotion of urban swimming culture, and the responsibility of stewardship for future generations. Together, these principles highlight the importance of healthy swimmable rivers to communities. You can read the full Swimmable Cities Charter here.
Here in Ottawa, we are fortunate to have a river where people can swim today, whether at the over 300 sites we track through The Swim Guide or right outside our office at the NCC River House docks. Joining the Swimmable Cities alliance connects our work on the Ottawa River to a growing international effort to restore urban open water swimming.
However, it can be easy to take a Swimmable City for granted. This summer, Ottawa Public Health cut back on daily testing at city-run beaches in favour of weekly testing, despite evidence that conditions at some of these urban beaches are deteriorating. People protect what they love, and building a culture that loves and protects a river requires a foundation of public trust in the conditions at beaches and other places where people access the river.
The example of the City of Paris and the Seine River, which also joined the Swimmable Cities Alliance on World Rivers Day this year, shows how much effort it takes to restore an urban waterway to swimmability. After a century of swimming being banned, Paris opened the Seine for the 2024 Olympic Games and, in 2025, welcomed over 100,000 swimmers to enjoy the waterway. Their incredible efforts should be a lesson to us all, not just about working towards a swimmable urban river, but the importance of protecting it for future generations.
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