Good news for Au Feel de L'Eau

Aqua Taxi on the Gatineau, last summer

The Aqua Taxi service owned by Au Feel de L'Eau has had some good news this month. They are not only going to be sailing on the Ottawa and Gatineau Rivers this summer. They've also been granted permission to run their electric water taxi on the Rideau Canal.

Du nouveau pour 2014! Nous sommes très heureux d'annoncer que nous offrirons un service d'Aqua-Taxi électrique sur le canal Rideau dès la saison prochaine.

I'm very pleased to hear this. There are already cruises available through town from May to October, up the Rideau Canal to Dows Lake and back, but no opportunity to get off the boat at the far end. Your only option is to disembark at your starting point. The Aqua Taxi will change that. Since there isn't a convenient bus running from downtown to Dows Lake, it's a service Ottawa tourists and residents have needed for years.

I wonder if I shall see them bringing their boat up through the eight locks by Parliament Hill.

New Year and very cold

The other night, out of doors at 30 below, we saw a girl set off to walk her dog across the Rideau River to the park on the other side. There's no danger of people falling through the ice now as it must have thickened considerably during the last couple of weeks.

The average thickness of the ice in Baitshop Bay by Petrie Island, on the Ottawa River, is now reported to be 30cm. Last reported ice condition: "excellent" for fishing.

Today the Rideau Canal was opened for skating which means the ice is of a good thickness there too.

All 7.8 kilometres of the Rideau Canal Skateway are now open between Rideau and Dows Lake, including Patterson Creek and the Hartwell Locks. Last night a full sweep and flooding was completed. Sweeping operations were completed this morning. We ask that skaters use extra caution this afternoon. There are many areas with very rough patches of ice and with the volume of skaters, the condition of the ice will continue to deteriorate throughout the rest of the day.

Happy New Year, Ottawa!

Ottawa's Tall Ship

Yesterday evening, walking downtown, we made a detour down to the Rideau Canal locks to make sure the bottom one was closed. It was, and you can walk across, which means that my husband will be able to cycle to work in Kanata following the riverside trails without having to go through the traffic on Parliament Hill first; he can simply ride down the steep bike path from the National Gallery and then under the cliffs. There is still some ice on the bike trail but none in the river itself, now.

From our vantage point by the locks we noticed two wonderful things. First, the rusty old Alexandra Bridge over the Ottawa River was magically gilded by the setting sun from the west, especially dramatic with a grey sky for a backdrop to the east. I wished I'd had the foresight to bring a camera along. Secondly, as we walked past the penultimate lock, we saw the "Bytown Brigantine," still under tarpaulins, with her masts stowed horizontally, waiting to be sailed this summer. She's called Fair Jeanne and a visit to her website informs you of all kinds of possible adventures aboard. The section about Summer Activities in 2013 suggests that you

... be a part of history-in the-making, as Bytown Brigantine and the Fair Jeanne participate in three major events: the opening of Tall Ships Landing and the Aquatarium, the Tall Ships America Great Lakes Challenge 2013 and the Thousand Islands Flotilla.

You can participate in groups, as young teams (either in the 12 to 14 age group or the 15s to 18s) or as individual adults. It is not prohibitively expensive––each year, 20% of the ship's berths are made available to families through a bursary fund.

Dreaming of little boats

On our away trip last weekend we visited a chandler's store in Peterborough, to buy some rope for our tie-down spot at Rockcliffe airport. Peterborough is a magnet for the boating fraternity in summer, a stop on the Trent-Severn Waterway, famous for its "lift lock." While we were in the chandlery, we made an impulse buy, coming away with a Small-Craft Nautical Chart / Carte marine pour embarcations (published by Fisheries and Oceans Canada) of the Ottawa end of the Rideau Canal: Ottawa to Smiths Falls, Chart 1512.

We are now dreaming of using it, but would have to know how to do so properly. The Becketts Landing to Smiths Falls section looks particularly complicated. As we were overflying the area on our way back to Ottawa yesterday I thought of this and took a couple of photos of the bends and bays in the Rideau River at Smiths Falls. From a mile above the river the view looks very like the charts. The water is not quite ready for navigation at present.

Kilmarnock Island in the middle distance

The Rideau River / Canal at Smiths Falls

Low water

The water flow to the lower reaches of the Rideau must have been regulated last week, because its surface level was very low. Rocks and debris that we don't usually see were exposed to view. Three kayaks were out on the river on Saturday, each one containing two paddlers: a risky activity, because if anyone were to fall in at this time of year, the coldness of the water would be hard to survive for long.

The River's Daily Mean Flow is measured and monitored.

Spring seems early this year though. I have already seen swallows near the Ottawa River.

I assume the Rideau Canal through Ottawa is about to be filled in preparation for the summer boats and for the Tulip Festival next month. Talking of the Canal and of festivals, there'll be a Rideau Canal Festival again this August, with flotillas, a Bike Parade and an "Environment Fair."

Music in the park

In Major's Hill Park (Tulip Festival photo)

Sorry to say we'll be gone by the coming weekend that will be the start of Ottawa's Tulip Festival. It promises to be a good festival this year, featuring plenty of music making by the local choirs, bands and orchestras, as well as dancing, etc., especially in Major's Hill Park, the "main activity site" for the festival. This year's tulips aren't out yet, but some flower buds are starting to show a little colour.

The promontory where the park lies overlooks the inlet where the Rideau Canal flows into the Ottawa River and this high ground was once the home of Lieutenant-Colonel John By who masterminded the construction of the Canal in the 1820s. It was called Colonel's Hill in those days. Later, the lockmaster's house stood here, demolished in 1876 when the hill finally turned into a public park.

View from the Ottawa River, 1834, with Major's Hill on the left

There's nothing new in people enjoying musical entertainment in this park. In the nineteenth century it was used for the same kind of recreations.

My photo of a picture displayed in today's park

The Hog's Back

On Monday I was in a car that took me all the way along Colonel By Drive; at the southern end of that ride I went past the Hog's Back Falls, at the point where the Rideau Canal splits from the Rideau River, and caught a glimpse of them from the passenger seat. I always want to stop to take a closer look at these falls; they're less well known by tourists than are the Rideau Falls, some 10km downstream, but much loved by the citizens of Ottawa. Today, having been at a house within walking distance of the Hog's Back I made a special detour to visit them instead of jumping straight on the bus back to town.

The Hog's Back Park near the Falls is being "rehabilitated; the parking area has been closed for the last few months and the buildings fenced off. The construction work was started at the end of last summer and has been abandoned for the winter, but all I had to do on foot was follow the trail of footprints, skirting the fences to the lookout points where I managed to take some photos:

Getting out there

There are ski tracks, boot prints and paw prints all over our riverside parks where people and dogs have been enjoying themselves in the snow. The best way to get acclimatised to cold weather is to keep going out in it and Ottawans seem particularly good at this. The other night near the Minto Bridges we saw a very young baby cocooned in quilted wraps being pulled along on a sledge by his (her?) energetic father. This week, the Rideau Canal between Pretoria Bridge and Bank Street Bridge is open for skating again with many families out there, appreciating the good quality ice.

The air temperature wasn't particularly low yesterday, but away from the shelter of tall buildings or hillsides the strong wind made it feel chillier. There were some who took advantage of the wind at Britannia Bay on in the west end of town, to go kitesurfing on the frozen Ottawa River, as can be seen from a picture posted on the Weather Network's website. That's an activity more likely to keep your blood circulating than is the more static sport of ice-fishing, very popular in the national capital region all the same.

Diplomats and Canadians snowshoeing, January 2010

For six weeks, starting this week, the ladies of the Ottawa CFUW's Diplomatic Hospitality group host a series of Friday morning snow-shoeing outings for any diplomats and spouses of diplomats who are free to come and experience the Ottawa winter in this way. People from the Philippines, say, or Angola, for whom snow is an unfamiliar phenomenon indeed, are intrigued by the opportunity to do something like this during their posting. I've been a member of Diplomatic Hospitality (on the Canadian side) for nearly 14 years now, and haven't tired of participating yet. This Friday we're going to plod down the trail beside the Ottawa River near Blair Road and the Rockcliffe Parkway in the east end from which there are some beautiful views across to Upper Duck Island, Lower Duck Island and the Quebec side. My picture was taken at the same event this time last year.