Reflected in steel balls

Our group has made a couple of attempts to meet out of doors during the pandemic, because we're missing one another. The snag is that several of our group are in the vulnerable category and don't feel like taking the risk, even in a relatively safe environment. This week, instead of meeting on a Zoom call, a few of us met in the parking lot of Strathcona Park for a face-to-face encounter instead, wearing masks of course, and warm clothes, because it was a chilly day. We did a lap of the park, setting off beside the Rideau River; its water level was very low and the ducks appeared to be wading rather than swimming in it. 

Then we crossed the bridge that connects Somerset Street to the eastern bank of the river, named the Adàwe Crossing, admiring the sculpture half-way across, two large steel balls reflecting us, the river and the sky, with the title, A View From Two Sides. This was created by the artist Kenneth Emig who knows our friend Jill (now living in Victoria, BC). Jill informs me that he made the sculpture at the new, Ottawa University Campus, light rail station, as well. That one is similar, featuring another steel sphere; he calls it Sphere Field.

The conversation in German didn't last all that long, due to the shortness of our walk, but we enjoyed one another's company and hope to meet in this way again. Ute extended her walk by arriving and returning home on foot; the rest of us used our cars.

Only short flights

"We can't fly anywhere!" Chris complains, meaning that this year we've been thwarted from undertaking a trip by air to stay overnight in a place that's new to us, or to land somewhere like Ithaca, say, in New York State, to revisit its attractions on the ground. Instead, we've only been for short flights, "round the block", usually up above the Gatineau River to the Wakefield area and back, which we can do in under an hour. Once, at the end of October, we extended that loop and overflew the dam at Low. We have memories of the "log-driver" canoeing trips that used to be offered by Aventures Radisson in the 1990s, on that stretch of the river, through spectacular scenery. 

Scenery near Low, QC

Nostalgia trips. On another afternoon, at the end of May, flying through bands of rain visibly falling from grey clouds as we approached them, where squalls of wind blew into us, we had a there-and-back outing by air to Whitewater Village on the banks of the Ottawa River, via the Luskville and Shawville areas, so that I could take aerial shots of Barbara's cottage where we'd stayed last November (in 2019). Barbara was there at the time of our flight, and came out on her deck to wave to us, even. Chris repeated that ride with Chuck, later, who takes better photos than I.

Whitewater Village

A similar ride was the one when, during the pumpkin harvest season in mid-October, we took the plane (without stopping) down to Cornwall airport (CYCC) and back, one Saturday afternoon, doing a "touch-and-go" landing on the runway and getting fine views of the St. Lawrence from the circuit there, with the international border very close. On the way there and back we overflew the farm where I'd been for a wagon ride through the pumpkin fields the previous day, with people in the Diplomatic Hospitality Group.

Pumpkin farm from the air

St. Lawrence River, near CYCC

Twice this year, we did land somewhere else and got out for a walk, again just repeating short trips we'd had many times in the past. It's almost exactly an hour between Rockcliffe airport and Kingston (CYGK), so that's a popular excursion for members of the Rockcliffe aviation fraternity; it's traditionally one's first solo cross-country flight when working towards one's Private Pilot Licence. Chris and I walked through the conservation area to the edge of Lake Ontario, that day. Another walk in the woods that we relished was on the day we flew north in September, also for about an hour, to Mont-Laurier airport (CSD4), our walk after lunch at the nearby roadside café following the ATV trails part way around the airport fence, on the outside, that is, through some wild-looking shrubland.

All worth doing, and we appreciate how extraordinarily lucky we are to have those experiences, and to be able to afford what it costs to use our little private plane, but none of the above is the same as a real flying adventure, such as we've boasted of in most previous years.

The Riverkeeper Meeting

I hosted the second of my guest-speaker meetings (Webinars, in effect) for my Environment Action group on November 9th. After the previous speaker (my daughter!) had described how scientists can assess the damage to our planet from outer space, by means of satellite technology, I said, making a bad pun, we were now "Zooming-in" to something closer to home, the state of our local rivers. Our speaker this time was Elizabeth Logue, "Riverkeeper". On Twitter, she calls herself @nibilogue. She is the policy developer and spokesperson for the Ottawa Riverkeeper organisation.

The Waterkeeper Alliance, soliciting the help of citizen scientists to keep waterways healthy,  is an international network of about 300 organisations, Ottawa Riverkeeper being one such. Its team of 12 organisers, plus their dedicated friends and assistants, are "the eyes and the ears of our watershed", monitoring the quality of the water we play in, swim in, fish in, and drink. Next year is its 20th Anniversary. 

Elizabeth loves the rivers, especially the Gatineau River on whose nearby banks she grew up. She still puts its rocks in her pockets, she said. At the start of her presentation she acknowledged her Indigenous heritage, the first guardians of this region being the Algonquin-Ashinabeg nation. She herself has Indigenous blood; her Irish grandfather married an Algonquin girl, and Elizabeth uses words from the native language. 'Thank you', in Algonquin, is Miigwetch.

The Ottawa or Kitchissippi River rises (not far from the source of the Gatineau River) in the Val d'Or region, meandering for about 1300 kilometres to Montreal where it merges with the St. Lawrence seaway. The Ottawa Riverkeeper sells maps of that watershed, an area that supplies drinking water to some two million people. The Ottawa River needs to be swimmable and fishable, in other words, safe. That means that sewage overflow must not go directly into it. The Riverkeeper team has been working with the municipalities of Ottawa and Gatineau to ensure that it doesn't, or that as little sewage seeps in as possible, so during these last few years a new sewer overflow pipe has been constructed beneath the city. (In fact it runs through our neighbourhood and we could hear the pile-drivers across the river from us making the hole for the tunnel in New Edinburgh park). When the construction was officially completed, on November 20th, Elizabeth Logue was standing alongside the Mayor and MP Catherine McKenna ("Climate Advocate" and Canada's Minister of Infrastructure and Communities). The Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel (CSST project) has been a $232.3 million investment, was constructed by the Tomlinson Group and is part of the Ottawa River Action Plan.

Other pollutants that ought to stay out of the river are the fertilizers and herbicides that kill the fish in it and are harmful to humans. Patches of algae blooms indicate where these contaminants are. Road salt is another problem, leaking into the drains through any small crack. After her presentation, in answer to a question about this, Elizabeth pointed out that it would be better to tackle the ice on city surfaces with urea rather than salt. 

At 58 sample sites where sediment had been investigated, micro-plastics have been detected. Nuclear waste is another huge hazard to health and biodiversity, from the reactors at Chalk River and Rolphton, near Renfrew (the latter was Canada's first nuclear reactor).

Other concerns of the Riverkeeper are the changing shoreline of the local rivers and the endangered species of flora and fauna. 50 (hydro) dams that have been constructed and / or decommissioned: the dams on the Lièvre are out of date; the Carillon dam is being reconstructed to include fish ladders. In collaboration with the Museum of Nature, the interaction of different species is closely observed. Zebra mussels are invasive. At risk are the American eel, the Lake Sturgeon carrying the embryos of hickory nut mussels, and the turtles. 

Groups of young people aged between 17 and 25 help with Watershed Health Assessment and Monitoring (WHAM) investigations, taking part in the Youth Water Leaders program. A recent initiative of the Federal Government is the Indigenous Guardians project. One Aboriginal community in our vicinity collaborates with scientists to help them understand the threats to fish, investigating mercury levels, for example, and there's a similar collaboration with people at the First Nations Reserve near Lake Timiskaming, upriver. 

Goal 6 of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals is the one about Clean Water and Sanitation. The UN declared this a Water Action Decade, so the Riverkeepers' work is very à propos. Canada's representative at the UN, Stéphane Dion, stated that "our future depends on a water-secure world," adding that "Canada is here to contribute, to be part of the solution."

Elizabeth left us with a hotline number to call if we have something to report concerning the rivers:

1-888-9KEEPER

For the record, a historic moment

 Screenshot taken this afternoon:

At this moment of tremendous relief, Shakespeare, as often, springs to mind, with Feste's remark in Twelfth Night, Act V, Scene I:

And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

... as does this line by Goethe:

Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erde.