E HD P Sport BS HD • E! HD • CITYTV HD • FO .1 HD • OMNI.2 HD • CTV HD • SRC HD • C HD • TSN HD • NASCAR HOT PASS HD • RAPTORS NBA D • NHL CENTRE ICE HD • MLB EXTRA INNINGS HD • WGN HD NBALEAGUEPASSHD•NCAA COLLEGEFOOTBALLANDBASKETBAL HD • TMN HD • HBO CANADA HD • MPIX HD • LEAFS TV HD • DISCOVITERY’HSD •LIKE SHOWCASE AN HD • NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HD • For more than 20 A&E HD • HDNET • RROGERSOGERS SPORTSNESPORTSNET HHDD • TTHEHE SCORE HD • PBS years, the Lebreton Flats Tailrace has HD • GALL-YOU-CAN-WATCHLOBAL HD • ABC HD • NBC HD • CBS HD • E! HD • CITYTV provided a challenge HD • FOX HD • SUN TV HD • OMNI.1 HD • OMNI.2 HD • CTV HD for local paddlers. For • SRC HD • CNN HD • SPEED HD • TSN HD • NASCAR HOT PASS almost as long, it has HD BUFFET. also been the subject of a HD • RAPTORS NBA TV HD • NHL CENTRE ICE HD • MLB EXTRA dispute that has entangled NNINGS HD • WGN HD • NBA LEAGUE PASS HD • NCAA COLLEGE three levels of government. FOOTBALL AANND BBASKETBALLASKETBALL HD • TMN HD • HHBOBO CANADA HD • How the paddlers finally MPIX HBOND • ROGERS APPETIT SPORTSNET HD .• THE SCORESC HD • PBS HD • made it to the finish line GLOBAL HD • ABC HD • NBC HD • CBS HD • E! HD • CITYTV HD By James Hale ROGERS HAS MORE HD VARIETY THAN ANYWHERE ELSE. • FOX HRogersD • givesS UN youN the TVT mostV HD movies • andOMNI sports, as.1 wellH asD • OMNI.2 HD • CTV HD • SRC HDspecialty• C N channelsN H likeD HBO• Canada.SPEEDSM And withHD HD • On TSN Demand, HD • NASCAR HOT PASS HD you can watch the hottest programs whenever you want. Get a Troubled Waters • RAPTORogersRS HDN boxBA andT startV enjoyingHD the• ultimateNHL HDC experienceENTR today.E ICE HD • MLB EXTRA INNIN

HD • WGN HD • NBA LEAGUE PASS HD • NCAA COLLEGE FOOT if there were a gold medal for the best-kept secret in station, a single-storey lime- Call 1 888 ROGERS1 or visit rogers.com/hd for details. Ottawa, the Lebreton Flats Tailrace would own the podium. stone building on Fleet Street, AND BASKETBALL HD • TMNTMN HHDD • HBO CANADA HD • M Each day thousands of cars flow along the eastern end of designed by engineer Thomas LEAFS TV HD • DISCOVERY HD • SHOWCASE HD • the Ottawa River Parkway where it merges with Wellington Keefer. Unlike other pumping Street and the Portage Bridge, and it’s unlikely that a single stations that used steam to GEOGRAPHIC HD • A&E HD • HDNET • ROGERS SP driver is aware of the Olympic training facility that runs power their turbines, the Fleet under their wheels. Street facility operated its two E SCORE HD • PBS HD • GLOBAL HD • ABC H Alternatively known as the Pumphouse course, the short pumps using water power expanse of whitewater tumbles north toward the parkway, from an intake located near HD • CITYTV HD • FOX HD • SUN then passes under the road before joining the Ottawa River Wave pool: Without the Chaudière Falls. Once the behind the Library and Archives Canada. For more than this course, Michael water passed through the machinery, it D SRC HD 20 years, it has provided a challenge for local paddlers. For Tayler (top), a promising washed out the other side of the building almost as long, it has also been the subject of a dispute that junior kayaker, would and toward the river. have to go to places like has entangled three levels of government — a textbook illus- Valleyfield, Quebec, or Although seven additional units sup- tration of intersecting bureaucracies in the national capital. Charlotte, North Caro- plemented the Fleet Street pumping To appreciate the complexity of the dispute, it’s essential lina, to get the hours station between 1876 and 1915, Keefer’s in the water he needs. to understand the provenance of the current that floats Doug Corkery (bottom) design had exceptional longevity. By TM local kayakers’ boats. has been the instru- 1983, when it was designated under the LIVE LIFE IN HD In the years immediately following Confederation, fire mental force behind the Ontario Heritage Act, it was still servic- was the greatest fear of municipal governments. Prompted decades-long battle to ing part of the urban core and spewing get the Lebreton Flats by the devastating blaze that struck Chicago in 1871, cities Tailrace up, running, out a discharge of 30 cubic metres of 1 UP TO 15% DISCOUNT FOR CUSTOMERS WITH MULTIPLE ROGERS PRODUCTS – TV, INTERNET, HOME PHONE AND WIRELESS PHONE. like Ottawa initiated projects to pump their own water sup- and legal water per second at a velocity of five 1. Discount applies to monthly recurring service fees for eligible services. Minimum 24-month term required. Go to rogers.com/bundles for details. SMHBO is a service mark of Home Box Offi ce, Inc. used under license. plies. In 1874, construction began on the city’s first pumping metres per second. © Home Box Offi ce, Inc. TM Trademarks of Rogers Communications Inc. used under license or of Rogers Cable. All other brands and logos are trademarks of their respective owners, used under license or with permission. © 2009 Rogers Cable. photography: harry nowell april/may 2009 OTTAWA 29

RGC_M_09_1066_A_ITS.indd 1 2/25/09 1:51:20 PM

APPROVALS BY DATE Date: 10 FEBRUARY 2009 Designer/Studio Artist: RN/CW Studio PRODUCTION NOTES LAYOUT Client: ROGERS Art Director: Type Mgr. Project: REMNANTS MAGAZINE Copywriter: • IMAGES ARE LINKED TO HI REZ 0 Docket No.: RGC_091066 Print Mgr: R. BROWN/J. BAKER Proofreader • IMAGES ARE VECTOR BASED Color/B&W: 4C REVs Print Mgr. Title: IT'S LIKE AN ALL-YOU-CAN-WATCH... Fonts: Berkeley; Arial; Frutiger Pubs: OTTAWA MAGAZINE Art Director 0

Copywriter LASER% AD NUMBER: Creative Dir. 7" X 10" RGC_M_09_1066_A_ITS Live: 8.25" X 10.875" Acct. Mgmt. Trim: 8.5" X 11.25" Typesetting: Optic Nerve Bleed: This advertisement prepared by PUBLICIS Client 4 Sport

A river runs through it: It’s a well-kept secret. Ever day, thousands of drivers commute along the Ottawa River Parkway, never realizing that they’re passing over an Olympic training facility. This view shows the course, along with the steps, concrete, and stones that the paddlers brought in to improve the site

doug corkery can still recall the tion would be turned off occasionally,” moment in 1972 when he discovered says Corkery, who has been the club’s the drainage ditch hidden far below the president on and off for 25 years. “That recently cleared surface of Lebreton allowed us to go down there and remove Flats. A paddler since his late teens who some of the overgrown brush and gar- rose to compete at the national level bage. After that, we started creating a before scaling back his kayaking career slalom course in the water, using fencing to focus on his young family, he was and rocks. It was all trial and error.” at once attracted and repelled by the Emboldened by their success with the pumping-station runoff. “It was just this makeshift course, the River Runners took overgrown sluice that was being used the project further and began building as a snow dump in the winter, and we steps down to the water to make trans- figured we could get killed if we went porting their kayaks easier. Then one down there with our boats.” spring morning in the early 1990s (“Good In 1972, competitive kayaking was Friday at 7 a.m.,” as Corkery recalls it), a demonstration sport at the Munich an NCC worker caught them in the act. Summer Games, a reflection of the ris- The club avoided a fine, but a critical ing worldwide interest in the sport. In line had been crossed. “The lawyers got Ottawa, that interest sparked the forma- involved,” says Corkery with a groan. tion of the Ottawa River Runners. Like “They were concerned about the liability amateur proponents around the world, issues, so we started writing letters to the club began looking at potential white- every politician we could think of.” water training sites. In response, the Two provincial Liberal members National Capital Commission examined — Dalton McGuinty and Richard several locations and eventually listed Patten — were the only politicians the Fleet Street sluiceway as second who responded, and through them, the behind Hog’s Back. Neither was devel- Rivers Runners got then-NCC chair- oped — and it would take 20 years for man Marcel Beaudry to intercede on kayaking to make it back to the Olympics their behalf and push his organization as an official sport — but Corkery says toward formalizing a legal agreement that at regular intervals, local paddlers with the club. But like running a slalom continued to lobby for action. course in a kayak, another hazard lay Meanwhile, the Ottawa River Run- just downstream. “The NCC’s agree- ners made an interesting discovery. ment was huge,” says Corkery, “but “Sometime in the late 1980s, we noticed then we had to meet with the regional that the water from the pumping sta- government about replacing our make-

30 OTTAWA april/may 2009 shift obstacles, and that turned out to be really tough. The region was plan- ning on upgrading the turbines in the pumping station, so we had to deal with their engineers.” By then, more government bodies were involved, including the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority, which was concerned about pollution at the site. The River Runners were quickly getting a lesson in inter- governmental affairs and were spending more time moving rocks and debris than paddling. By 1997, the site was clean enough to earn a Class 1 fish-habitat designa- tion from Fisheries and Oceans, and the following year Corkery embarked on the most ambitious stage of the reclamation process. He raised close to $25,000 from paddlers and corporate donors and convinced local contractors to donate $50,000 worth of concrete forms, labour, and heavy equipment to install permanent slalom features on the floor of the sluiceway. As a family physician, Corkery has seen his share of drama, but he calls the events of September 1998 “a total nightmare.” Along with his brother Kevin, he found himself responsible for the delivery of tons of precast concrete that had to be lowered — blind — over the side of the cliff by the largest crane he could persuade someone to lend them. “I just wanted to die,” he says. “I thought, Well, this is high stress. We had a bunch of volunteer paddlers as our construction crew, and we were right at the red line for tolerance on the crane as it was doing these blind placements over the edge. If anything had happened…” He shakes his head at the memory. That said, the very next year the paddlers-turned-construction-workers were at it again, placing 150 tons of rock along the shoreline to reduce flow velocity and reinforcing the slopes to prevent erosion and provide bet- ter access. Their payoff came in 2000 when the course was the site of the Canadian Whitewater Championships, which allowed the club to raise $12,000 toward further enhancements. That’s where the story should have ended happily. As Corkery says, “Things were working well.” (Heck, even a for- mer NCC chief architect, John Leaning,

april/may 2009 OTTAWA 31 Sport

Team players: Sarah Boudens and James Cartwright competed in Beijing. Both train on the Pumphouse course, which plays host to the Canadian Whitewater Slalom National Team Trials from May 29 to 31

had called the tailrace “charmingly wild on a warm summer evening, the “indus- and mysterious.”) trial outflow” — now beautifully land- And that’s when the newly amalgam- scaped, with public sightlines from the ated City of Ottawa got involved. Trans-Canada Trail above — teems As part of a deal to revitalize Lebreton with activity. At one end of the course, Flats, the NCC had traded the shoreline a half-dozen recreational kayakers in of the pumping station runoff to the their 40s and 50s are getting some city, and citing access concerns in the pointers from John Hastings, a mem- aftermath of a drowning unrelated to ber of Canada’s national team who paddling, the city shut down the site trains at the tailrace. Farther north on while officials decided how to proceed. the course, where the water runs fast, Running a hand across his animated 16-year-old Michael Tayler — a promis- face, Corkery summarizes the struggles ing junior who is beginning to make a of the past five years, as though they’re name for himself — is skilfully manoeu- hardly worth remembering after the vring his boat around the concrete successes of a decade ago. The club’s obstacles, slicing past the overhanging archived newsletters from 2004 to 2007 “gates” and reversing against the bub- repeat the same hopeful message over bling current. His father, Jim, princi- and over: maybe next year. pal of Carleton Heights Public School “The city tried to work with us, but and a long-time River Runner member, Parks and Recreation didn’t understand addresses the practical advantages of us,” he says. “They thought we should the tailrace facility. put a high fence around the site and not “This is a venue that’s able to provide let the public near it, but we knew that paddlers of all levels what they need. It was impossible and we wouldn’t be able has the upstream section that is calm to get the insurance we needed. There enough to allow beginners to get com- were lots of ups and downs. Of course, fortable, and yet it’s challenging enough the city had cash-flow problems during so Olympians like James Cartwright and this time, as well.” Sarah Boudens can train here. Without Fortunately, the River Runners had it, young kayakers like my son have to the support of then then-mayor Bob go to places like Valleyfield, Quebec, or Chiarelli and Somerset Ward councillor Charlotte, North Carolina, to get the Diane Holmes, and eventually the city hours in the water they need.” re-engineered the site to everyone’s sat- He keeps a proud eye on Michael as isfaction. “Now we have an agreement the teenager swivels his kayak through with the city and the NCC, and Parks an impossible turn. Overhead, com- and Recreation is out of the picture,” muters keep their eyes on the road, Corkery explains. “We are officially not unaware that Olympic medals are being a park — it’s an industrial outflow.” minted down here.

32 OTTAWA april/may 2009