From its picturesque shores to its rushing rapids, Ottawa’s newest star isn’t like most celebrities. Nearly 1,300 kilometres long, with over 300 species of birds, 96 types of fish and a watershed larger than England, the Ottawa River’s wild beauty can’t be captured through a single lens.
And that was the challenge for Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of the French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. She has created three short films documenting the river and its people; the result of her collaboration last summer with the Ottawa Riverkeeper and the Gaspé Beaubien Foundation.
On Sept. 26, Understanding our Water premiered with a splash at the Ottawa Riverkeeper annual public meeting at the Museum of Nature. In the first of the three mini-documentaries on the Ottawa, Cousteau took aim at the dumping of urban storm water, sewage and industrial wastewater into the river. Her message was clear: citizens need to take action to save their waterway from degradation.
“Whether for swimming, drinking, or fishing, the Ottawa truly is a grand river for the people,” Cousteau says in the film. “Yet its waters are threatened by the very people who rely on it the most.”. Cousteau’s other mini-documentaries, Nature’s Course and The River of Many Voices, are just under 15 minutes long and feature a host of characters whose lives have been touched by the river, including Cousteau and Meredith Brown, Ottawa’s Riverkeeper.
Their debut marked the launch of a larger project called AquaHacking.
A joint initiative between Blue Legacy International, Ottawa Riverkeeper and the Gaspé Beaubien Foundation, the “hack” is the first of its kind in North America. This coming May, 200 young technology professionals will team up with watershed experts to create solutions to problems citizens bring forward. The three films are available free on the AquaHacking website and Cousteau will be back in town to kick off the three-day event.
“People often ask me, ‘Well, why are you doing stories about places like the Ottawa River? I mean, they don’t really have problems, right?’ ” Cousteau says. “I think that if we were able to really tackle innovative solutions here at home in the places that we love, and we’re able to solve these issues here, we’ll be able to export those solutions to the rest of the world and have a much greater impact.”
Tinted brown with tannin, the river’s colouring tells of the area’s intertwined natural and human histories. “(The tannin) has a lot to do with silt deposits and the rock formations upstream,” says Meaghan Murphy, co-ordinator of Ottawa Riverkeeper’s Riverwatch program. “There’s also some aspects of it that are related to the relic logging industry.”
Industrial wastewater is still polluting the river today, as are sewage and urban storm water. Dams also present problems, preventing species from spawning up river. But Meredith Brown, the Ottawa Riverkeeper, warns that trouble exists beyond the water’s edge. There is no single government agency responsible for the river’s health, nor is there a shared conservation plan between Ontario and Quebec.
Despite this, Brown says the upcoming AquaHacking summit is as much about engaging the community as it is about finding solutions to the river’s problems.
“In my experience, it’s really about connecting people to their river and improving their awareness and understanding,” Brown says, “because you know what? Seventy-five per cent of people don’t even know where their water comes from. They say it comes from the taps.”
Water cleanliness is the key.
“The one thing you absolutely cannot live without is clean water,” says Brown. “You know, that’s like a fundamental lesson that I teach my kids: How many days can you go without water? Not very many. So we take it for granted, but I remind people that we’re drinking the water out of the Ottawa River.”