There are 15 floors from the Rideau Club, on the top floor overlooking the Ottawa River, to the lobby at 99 Bank St. A straight shot, with no stops in between, takes less than 30 seconds in the elevator.
Geoff Green, the noted environmentalist and Order of Canada recipient, would need every one of those seconds.
Sharing the elevator with him was Mark Kristmanson, then-CEO of the National Capital Commission, a federal Crown corporation and principal steward of nationally significant public spaces.
Green saw an opportunity. It was time for the perfect elevator pitch.
It was 2016, and Green was chair of Ottawa Riverkeeper. The message had to be clear and simple — the organization did not belong in a cramped, corporate office on Bay Street. Ottawa Riverkeeper belonged on the river.
“I didn’t expect that to really go anywhere,” Green recalls. “Mark didn’t have time to react. The doors opened and we both went on our way. But it clearly stuck a little bit. You plant seeds and sometimes they grow. Fortunately, that seed grew.”
Fast forward to 2023 and the NCC River House, an imposing boathouse overlooking the Ottawa River, has thrown open its doors to the public, marking a new era for the watershed in the nation’s capital.
The three-storey heritage boathouse, adorned in white wooden siding with red trim, is changing how the city thinks and interacts with the river and the watershed.
“It is amazing to see,” says Ottawa Riverkeeper CEO Laura Reinsborough, peering out the window of the non-profit’s new offices at the common areas below. “Just seeing how busy it is: people swimming, the lineup for gelato, all the tables are filled on the patio. People are connecting with the river and loving it.”
And yet, on that hot afternoon in August, Ottawa Riverkeeper had issued a “no swimming advisory.” The water quality did not pass — a sobering reminder that, even in Ottawa, the water can never be taken for granted.
Ottawa Riverkeeper, a registered charity, serves as an independent guardian of this most precious resource, collaborating with all levels of government, the private sector and the Algonquin Anishnabeg Nations to ensure clean, healthy and accessible water for all people and species.
Founded in 2001, the organization was founded partly in response to a major problem surrounding sewage water overflows into the river, especially after a major rainfall. Today, according to Reinsborough, the City of Ottawa has reduced sewage overflows by an impressive 90 per cent.
Much work still needs to be done. While residents tend to think only about the immediate Ottawa area, the watershed encompasses around 200 municipalities.
One of the many pressing issues is microplastics, which are on an alarming rise in the watershed, according to a recent study from Carleton University.
Meanwhile, every winter, the blanket of road salt applied to streets and sidewalks is having a toxic, long-term effect on the water and the health of animals. According to Ottawa Riverkeeper research, 80 per cent of samples show chronic toxicity due to Ottawa’s overuse of road salt.
Describing the watershed as “data-poor,” Ottawa Riverkeeper this year will release the organization’s first Watershed Report Card to truly paint an accurate portrait of the state of the city’s water.
“This will be very comprehensive,” Reinsborough explains. “We couldn’t have done it without all the experience under our belts. So it is an indicator of our maturity as an organization.”
Certainly, the organization has come a long way. It all began with two or three people at a single desk tucked into the corner of Mountain Equipment Co-op in Westboro. These were the days of small budgets and big dreams.
From there, the non-profit moved to Trailhead, also in Westboro, a canoe tripping company and small retail store, which rented its second floor to a few like-minded organizations. But that office would eventually be torn down for condos.
Ottawa Riverkeeper next landed on Bay Street, the same corporate office the organization inhabited during Green’s elevator pitch. To Green’s pleasant surprise, a few weeks after his pitch, he received a call from the NCC to come in for a meeting.
Kristmanson presented Green and his Riverkeeper colleagues with a plan for a future Westboro Beach headquarters. It was an attractive property, Green recalls, but many years away from being a viable option.
“Well, I might have something else,” Kristmanson mused, requesting another file from his assistant. “We’re planning to fix this place up. What do you think?”
And so the plan became to restore the historic boathouse of the Ottawa New Edinburgh Club, a private club devoted to rowing and sailing. The century-old boathouse had fallen into disrepair and been mostly gutted. In some places, it was possible to see clean through the floorboards into the river. But there was something else on those floorboards that caught Green’s attention.
“We looked down on the floor and, I kid you not, there was an old Ottawa Riverkeeper sticker stuck to the floor where we were standing,” he remembers. “If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is.”
Now, after five years of renovations and millions of dollars, Ottawa Riverkeeper, alongside the Ottawa New Edinburgh Club, has a new home.
Beyond the office space, research, education and advocacy work, the NCC River House is all about the public experiencing the river like never before.
Reinsborough says new educational programs represent perhaps the biggest opportunity to grow. Throughout the fall and spring, Ottawa Riverkeeper will welcome students from across Ottawa and Gatineau, with a special focus on underprivileged communities. More field trips, exhibits, interactive displays and new and better programming will form the basis of the charity’s latest $5-million campaign.
You protect what you love, Reinsborough argues. By bringing the river to the people, and people to the river, perhaps future generations will do a better job protecting it.
“In some ways, the issues facing the watershed have not changed in the past two decades,” says Green, who, after nearly two decades with the organization, will be stepping down as chair later this year. “Our mission is the same. It is about education, inspiring awareness and helping people to understand how important the river and the watershed is. So although that has not changed, our capacity to share these stories and the urgency to take action has grown.”
Jeff Todd is the president of AFP Ottawa Chapter and VP of marketing and communications for the WCPD Foundation.
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