The head of the Ottawa Riverkeeper advocacy group says it’s time to change the public’s longstanding perception that the Ottawa River isn’t clean enough to swim in.
Riverkeeper CEO Laura Reinsborough — who also holds the title “Riverkeeper” — hosted a recent panel discussion at the NCC River House that highlighted how a city’s “swimmability” is emerging as a key quality-of-life indicator in major urban centres around the world.
And Reinsborough cited Abacus/Riverkeeper polling data from 2020 that showed just 24 per cent of local respondents considered the Ottawa River clean and 78 per cent said they’d never or rarely swam in it — despite the fact that 92 per cent of those surveyed believed the presence of the river makes living in the capital better.
“As the water quality has improved over the years, the public perception of it being clean and accessible has not caught up as quickly,” said Reinsborough, whose organization is headquartered at River House, which features a popular public river-swimming area opened in July 2023 by the NCC.
“Rivers are very dynamic systems,” she added. “The ecosystem can bounce back really quickly and become much healthier when you clean it up, but to change our perception takes longer.”
Ottawa and several cities in Europe, including Paris, have recently reopened significant stretches of their urban waterways to public swimming after 100 years of forbidding it. The Riverkeeper’s June 24 panel featured several champions of the international “Swimmable Cities” movement and highlighted the many benefits generated when rivers are cleaned up and made safe and accessible for swimming.
The evening panel was held in the Learning Lab room at NCC River House. Reinsborough said the discussion drew an atypical cross-section of the public — all of them citizens keen to swim in the river and some, such as ice swimmer Tom Heyerdahl and moderator Sarah Dobbins, with swimming marathon records to their names.
Swimming “helps with my mental health, and I just loved connecting with it — and also it’s community,” said Heyerdahl, referring to fellow swimming enthusiasts gathered for the conversation.
The panel included National Capital Commission CEO Tobi Nussbaum, a former city councillor; Dr. Banu Örmeci, Carleton University professor and Jarislowsky Chair in Water and Health; and Australian environmentalist Matthew Sykes, co-founder of the Swimmable Cities Alliance, whose charter Ottawa Riverkeeper signed last June.
“The Swimmable Cities movement is so incredibly important,” said Dobbins. “The more people that we have thoughtfully using the river and enjoying it means that we’re going to be protecting it.”
Sykes, who started the movement in Melbourne, Australia — where a length of the Yarra River is controversially off-limits for swimming — has grown it into a coalition of 236 organizations across 115 cities in 37 countries, playing a role in the cleanup of the Seine River in Paris ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Sykes framed swimmable cities as places that offer accessible and clean urban waterways.
“It starts with the right to swim,” he said. “A sub-line of that relates to having the right to learn how to swim.” He recalled London’s deputy mayor for the environment, Mete Coban, inviting the BBC to film him earlier this year learning to swim.
Sykes said the right to swim also means smart urban planning, effective and transparent water-quality management (such as publicly available water test results), and infrastructure that supports accessible waterways. Brought together, these achievements can have a beneficial effect on a city’s tourism, livability and prosperity.
According to Sykes, a positive perception of urban waterways is the ultimate goal.
“If you can sit down, have a meal with someone, or a coffee, and they don’t cringe when you talk about swimming out on a river, you know that you’ve gotten there,” he said.
Sykes and Örmeci agreed that Ottawa is off to a good start.
“We do have a lot of potential, but we’re really at the beginning,” said Örmeci, with Sykes characterizing Ottawa as having a solid foundation through its various public swimming spots.
Örmeci, who conducted high-profile testing of the water quality at various points along a 20-kilometre stretch of the Rideau River, emphasized that climate change increases the public need for equitable access to the cooling “blue spaces” of public pools and waterways — especially since many people, particularly those who are younger, lack a car, air conditioning or a lakeside cottage.
“Every summer, it’s getting hotter and hotter, and we’re having longer and longer periods of really hot weather, and so…it’s a public health issue,” said Örmeci. “In Ottawa, it’s critical that we have more green and blue cooling spaces, and the river is the best option . . . This is not just a recreational issue.”
Pushing for a positive perception of urban waterway swimmability also comes at a time when a high percentage of city infrastructure — notably outdoor public pools — has reached or is reaching the end of its lifespan.
For example, the Entrance pool in Bells Corners is closed this season, and the General Burns pool in Parkwood Hills required emergency repairs last summer, forcing it to temporarily close, with Knoxdale-Merivale Coun. Sean Devine stating in a June 2 Facebook post that it’s eight years past its official lifespan and the cost to extend it to 2030 was $170,000, plus $30,000 to renovate the change room pavilion.
Devine wrote that the city’s approach to “buying time” with emergency patch repairs, rather than replacing aging infrastructure such as outdoor pools, isn’t sustainable, and he warned that the city’s long-range financial plan has embedded this approach.
“The plan does not solve the problem so much as manage it. It pushes the issue down the road, as we’ve done year after year,” Devine stated. He also warned that the language of the city’s financial plan suggests that some assets and facilities may be permanently closed or perhaps sold off.
“This is a significant quality of life issue,” Devine said. “This is a systemic, structural challenge caused not only by external factors beyond our control, such as rising construction costs, but repeated political decisions to defer capital investments and to keep taxes lower than what the city actually requires.”
Though natural waterways, unlike pools, aren’t chlorinated, the Riverkeeper panelists said designated river-swimming areas are regulated and meet high water-quality standards.
Örmeci highlighted the contrast in Canadian water standards with those in Europe, where the Seine was declared safe for swimming last year.
“In Europe (the standard) is 1,000 E. coli per 100ml, and even if you exceed that, like in Paris, that was OK. Our limit is 200 E. coli per 100ml, and we don’t even approach it. All the measurements we did in the Rideau River were maybe around 50 per 100ml. Our waters are really safe,” she said.
Water literacy was another point of discussion on the panel, with Nussbaum and Sykes going in-depth on how a strong culture of swimming decreases drowning incidents.
Nussbaum explained that regulated spots, from lifeguards to demarcated swim areas, lower the risk of drowning compared to unregulated entrance points, referring to an incident last year in the Rideau River in Manotick, which has no beaches or official swim spots.
“It’s really important to acknowledge that there are different typologies of swimming,” said Nussbaum, referring to the NCC’s supervised beaches, such as Westboro on the Ottawa River, hybrid spots that are supervised at peak periods such as River House, and unsupervised deep-swimming areas such as the Dow’s Lake dock. “We have chairs along our docks, and that’s really interesting, because you have eyes on the water.”
Sykes described how a “village safety net” can be developed through waterway engagement, which creates a culture of passive observation of unsupervised areas that can quickly be responded to if there’s an incident.
“I’m proud they’re giving us these little spots in the city. It’s a start, but I want more. I think we’re at a threshold…the fact that they had this meeting tonight, huge.”
— Tom Heyerdahl, marathon swimmer
It means shorelines have been activated with amenities that bring citizens close, and bystanders of various swimming experience are comfortable entering the water at the sign of trouble.
“That’s when you know it’s deeply embedded in culture, but it means that everyone needs to be able to step up and connect with the waterfronts,” Sykes said.
The panel discussion ended with a group swim in the area next to River House, with some panel members and many audience members jumping into the water — a demonstration of the kind of relationship the panelists argued should be nurtured everywhere between residents and their rivers.
Reinsborough said there is a disconnect between valuing the presence of waterways — our tendency to build societies adjacent to them — and perceiving them as healthy enough to “put our bodies in,” as mammals who love water.
“This movement to safely put our bodies into the water where we chose to settle, that’s like a rewilding,” she said. “It’s a reorientation to our own communities, and that’s why I really love the Swimmable Cities charter, where swimmability is deemed as an indicator of livability.”
Heyerdahl called the panel discussion a significant step towards changing public perceptions about urban waterway swimming. He credited the NCC for its recent waterway activations — including River House and Dow’s Lake — but said more can be done in adding public access points, particularly along the Rideau River.
The NCC is unveiling additional swimming sites on the Ottawa River this summer on the Gatineau shore next to the Canadian Museum of History and across the water at the East Wharf dock below Major’s Hill Park near the entrance locks of the Rideau Canal.
“I’m proud they’re giving us these little spots in the city,” said Heyerdahl. “It’s a start, but I want more. I think we’re at a threshold . . . The fact that they had this meeting tonight — huge.”
