Rivers don't care about politics

Walking every day through the parks and over the local bridges that cross the Rideau river, I'm aware of the gradual changes in the ice's consistency. What's floating down the river now is much thinner ice than a week ago, so presumably some melt is happening further upstream.

Here's a picture of the ice approaching the Rideau Falls on its way past the buildings now used by the government's department of Foreign Affairs, with the Unity Tower in the background and the sun's reflection glinting in the foreground. Since September 2011, the place has officially been known as the John G. Deifenbaker Building, though most people still refer to it as 111, Sussex Drive, or the Old City Hall. On the other side of King Edward Avenue, but effectively next door to it, at 125 Sussex Drive, is the Lester B. Pearson building. Diefenbaker and Pearson were political rivals in the early '60s so this juxtaposition is presumably deliberate.

The river doesn't care, though!

Ducks are back

I always assumed that the ice breaking operations on the Rideau River finished just upstream from Cummings Bridge, where the rapids are, but today I caught a glimpse of the Amphibex well beyond that point, and the "growlers" that have been artificially broken off the main body of ice continue to sail down the river towards the falls.

Rideau Falls, March 2013, photo by Chris Hobbs

We went to look at the falls at the weekend, very full now and with huge chunks of ice splashing into the river below. It's a dramatic spectacle. The mere picture above cannot convey the noise, the dampness from the spray, the smell of the river water, and the dizziness you feel standing on that bridge and watching all that water in rapid motion just below you. Compare the picture above with the one taken on March 3rd and you can see how much ice on the falls themselves has been dislodged by the sheer force of the water during the last couple of weeks.

It hasn't taken the local ducks long to find the water that's been cleared. I think we saw nine goldeneyes near our house, but what do they find to live on? The freshwater shrimps and the weeds below the surface, I assume. It must be extremely cold in the water, just now.

If you're interested in spotting birds, by the way, there's a list of recent sightings on this page of the Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club website.

Ice-smashing, continued

Yesterday, the Weather Network published an article about the removal of ice from the Rideau River. Here's an interesting statistic from it:

Prior to the Amphibex's introduction, as much as 8,000 kilograms of dynamite would be used, scarring the riverbed and killing some wildlife. Today, only between 700 and 1,500 kilograms is used, limiting the damage.

The task costs something like $500,000, apparently. Another fact I learned for the first time from this article was that the"annual ice-smashing exercise in Ottawa has been in effect for more than a century."

This year I see that the river men have been making a sort of rectangular grid of trenches on the melting surface to facilitate the break-up of the ice. It looks like a giant game board, with the Amphibex and its workers working from rectangle to rectangle as it slowly makes its way from one side of the river to the other. By the end of today, they'll be past our house.

Blasted ice again

I don't mean the icicles that hang by the wall in the melt-freeze-melt-freeze sequence that always occurs at this time of year. I refer to the rivers––it's happening again: they are dynamiting the ice near the bridges on Sussex Drive and the Minto Bridges, just above the Rideau Falls. Yesterday, in fact, a section of Sussex Drive was closed all day during these operations.

Our house shakes and rattles from the explosions. We watched the operations for a while today, three sticks of dynamite being used at a time, and then the ice floes slowly move away from the continuous river ice towards the Falls where they break into fragments as they tip over.

The Rideau Falls, this morning, photograph by Chris Hobbs

The "nibbler," as my husband calls it, meaning the amphibious excavator which I have featured in this blog before, has been at work on the Ottawa River below the Rideau Falls, making room for the extra ice that's coming over. This year a reporter on the CBC radio program, Ottawa Morning, Hallie Cotman, had a ride on the amphibex. From the recording you can hear how noisy the machine is. The reporter also sounds rather nervous, on board. The crew teased her!

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/Ontario/ID/2338952306

The Lièvre and the Ottawa in winter

The Lièvre north of Buckingham

Autoroute 50, bridge over the Lièvre

Sunset over Ottawa

Flying in January, you need a good reason to get airborne, because it takes such a lot of uncomfortable effort preparing the 'plane before the flight and refitting the wing-covers, etc. afterwards. Once in the air, though, the views make all that effort worthwhile.

After flying up the Gatineau valley and across the hills towards Gatineau, my pilot decided to practise a long approach into Gatineau airport. With the wind coming from the west that meant having to land on runway 27, which entailed an instrument approach procedure taking us beyond the Rivière du Lièvre to the east before we could turn back towards the runway. That day, the rivers were ice covered rather than snowy, which made them easy to detect. We also had a good view of the new highway (Autoroute 50) to Montreal, now completed, with all its bridges in place.

Looking across the frozen Ottawa from the northern side,
Rockcliffe airport on the far bank

As we turned for home towards Ottawa, the sun was beginning to set and the light glinting off the ice on the Ottawa River made for some spectacular views in that direction, too.

Poetry by the river

Archibauld Lampman

I happened to pick up a copy of the New Edinburgh News this morning, the December edition actually, which has an article on Page 3, written by Paula Thompson, about Riverside Poetry in Stanley Park. Reading it, I learned that two plaques inscribed with poems, one in English, one in French, have been erected in Stanley Park near the riverside tennis courts there.

The English poem, entitled To the Ottawa was written by Archibauld Lampman, who died in 1899 aged only 37. He is buried in Beechwood Cemetery.

Here is the poem:

Dear dark-brown waters full of all the stain
Of sombre spruce-woods and the forest fens,
Laden with sound from far-off northern glens
Where winds and craggy cataracts complain,
Voices of streams and mountain pines astrain
The pines that brood above the roaring foam
Of La Montagne or Les Erables; thine home
Is distant yet, a shelter far to gain.
Aye still to eastward, past the shadowy lake
And the long slopes of Rigaud toward the sun,
The mightier stream, thy comrade, waits for thee,
The beryl waters that espouse and take
Thine in their deep embrace, and bear thee on
In that great bridal journey to the sea.

Alfred Garneau

Rigaud is a municipality with a sizeable hill to the west of Montreal. The Ottawa's "comrade river" is the St. Lawrence, of course.

The French poem, La Rivière is by Alfred Garneau (1836-1904), and describes not the Ottawa but the Rideau River:

C’est une forte berge, au large flanc de glaise,
Abruptement taillée ainsi qu’une falaise!
Le Rideau passe au bas, riant sous son flot noir.
D’ici, le long des eaux je puis apercevoir
Les roseaux alignés comme une palissade,
Où crie, à pointe d’aube, un grand héron maussade.
Étroite, la rivière a du moins son attrait
D’onde mouvante, avec, entrant sous la forêt,
Tous ses enfoncements, pareils à des alcôves,
Qu’achèvent de fleurir, au bord, les glaïeuls mauves.
L’on a pour horizon des blés, point de lointain
Que le ciel, et dans l’eau son mirage incertain.

Another thing I learned from Ms. Thompson's article is that there's a 35km long Poets' Pathway around Ottawa with other poems by Canada's (early, famous) "Confederation Poets" on plaques along the way. What a nice idea!

Early morning in Dick Bell Park

Early yesterday morning, a fine, cold one (the wind chill was -30º at one point) we drove up the Ottawa River Parkway to Carling Avenue and thence to Kanata. Passing the Remic Rapids and Deschênes Rapids, where the fast moving water never freezes, we noticed radiation fog rising and dissipating; later in the morning it vanished completely. * The sun being low in the sky made the views so beautiful that after a fortifying breakfast (at the well established Ralph & Sons diner––recommended!) I drove back to a place where I could park and take a longer look at the river, at Dick Bell Park near the Nepean Sailing Club (deserted at this time of year, of course). I got out of the car for a few minutes and took this picture, looking up the Ottawa River to the north west. This is a sheltered little cove, part of Britannia Bay, near Carling Avenue, where geese will land and rest once the ice has melted and they are back in town.

I presume the tracks are from snowmobiles. Note the icy surface of the river. This is because the snow on it melted at the start of the week; the melt water froze when the temperature dropped again. The same applies to the other rivers in the region.

This is my favourite view in Ottawa, by the way, whatever the weather.

*Returning along the same route after lunch the water of the rapids was a deep, deep blue.