OTTAWA RIVER BEACHBURG, ONTARIO
THERE ARE FEW RIVERS in Canada that com- pare historically with the Ottawa. It’s a river that built a country, yet it was forgotten or at the very least overlooked, as a paddling industry raged on without it. How does a river that now rivals all oth- ers as the ultimate playboating, training and test- ing ground remain only a logging and trade route until the mid-1970s? Simple. Lumberjacks don’t paddle and farmers
don’t swim. The Ottawa borders the TransCanada Highway
but the rapids lay hidden at the back of privately owned farmland where whitewater is more of a burden than boon. Local landowners saw no jewel and the whitewater remained a well-kept secret. In June of 1974 Hermann Kerckhoff, founder of
LEFT TO RIGHT IN PHOTO: Sean Mannion, Joe Kowalski, Jimmy Casilio, Rob Rosenberger, Ken Czambel
and Paul Fogal. PHOTO COURTESY OF JOE KOWALSKI
the Madawaska Kanu Centre, took his daughter Claudia to the Ottawa. He was there to disprove rumours that there was whitewater on the river. Putting in on the Quebec side at what is now
known as McCoy’s, the duo was pleased by what they saw, if only briefly. “It was a total surprise to my dad and I to see
any whitewater at all. After McCoy’s Chute it gets flat, so we still didn’t expect anything much down- river,” Claudia explains. “Then we came to a split
and the river got our respect immediately.” Choosing the right path, they discovered what is now known as the Main Channel. “It was total euphoria. We’d never seen such big or
friendly whitewater,” Claudia recalls of the river that would someday be the host of two world freestyle championships. “This was the find of a lifetime.” That summer expert paddlers from MKC began running the remaining branches and by 1975 oth- ers began to take note of the Ottawa’s potential. Ed Coleman, an American rafting company
owner and a mentor of sorts to Wilderness Tours owner Joe Kowalski, flew over the rapids that year and several weeks of trial rafting runs ensued. “It just never occurred to us that there may be
rapids on the Ottawa but it’s got world-wide atten- tion now,” Kowalski says. “There’s no place better for rafting and for kayaking. The Ottawa is prob- ably the best playboating river in the world.” Thirty-three summers later the Ottawa River will
be the stage for the world’s best freestyle pad- dlers. International athletes will be pulling off moves created on the Ottawa and paddling boats designed and tested on it. Not bad for a river that wasn’t supposed have
rapids. —NE 35
RAPID
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