{"id":26655,"date":"2019-03-28T10:24:08","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T10:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?post_type=cu_story&p=26655"},"modified":"2025-01-28T16:26:11","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T21:26:11","slug":"telling-stories-of-the-ottawa-river-through-song","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/story\/telling-stories-of-the-ottawa-river-through-song\/","title":{"rendered":"Telling Stories of the Ottawa River Through Song"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Telling Stories of the Ottawa River Through Song\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

Forming the provincial border between Quebec and Ontario, the remarkable Ottawa River flows west for 1,271 kilometres from Lac Des Outaouais at the top of the Laurentian Mountains to the district of North Bay, where it pours into Lake Timiskaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Downstream from the Chaudi\u00e8re Falls, about halfway through the course of the river, is a space where rippling water curves around three islands \u2013 Kettle, Upper Duck and Lower Duck.  From the river\u2019s source to its mouth, the waterway has a centuries-long history of bustling trade and activity, but this section of the river has a particularly fascinating past. Located in the east end of the City of Ottawa, the place has evolved from a 19th<\/sup> century shadowy hot spot for seedy activity into a popular locale for Ottawans to partake in boating, fishing, cottaging and picnicking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Telling
Cristina Wood poses in the Ingenium collection reserves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fundamentally, Cristina Wood, the 2018-2019 Garth Wilson Fellow and an MA student in Public History,<\/a> is interested in how particular spaces change through time, so naturally, she was drawn to the rich 20th-century history of this small, but a mercurial section of the river and the land that surrounds it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, for her Garth Wilson Fellowship, she intended to understand and then articulate how this Ottawa locale has been used both along the riverbank shores and on all three islands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having grown up in the area, Wood\u2019s personal connection with the region compelled her to study the Ottawa River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI entered the master\u2019s program fascinated with place history, on land \u2013 in Ottawa itself,\u201d says Wood.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cThe more I thought about the fluid boundaries of places, the closer I got to the river, its islands and its shores.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

She began exploring the environmental history and people\u2019s relationships with this small section of the Ottawa River \u2013 one that she knows well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPicturing the inhabitants\u2019 everchanging interactions with the river through the decades is definitely what drew me in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n