OUR STORIES IN STONE
PART 10
A river and its city
CHRIS MIKULA, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
Standing beneath Champlain’s statue, I try to imagine the country he saw: Indian encampments along
the banks of the river, the thunderous rapids, the vaulting sky and the forests that seemed to stretch
away forever.And then I look around at the city that has come to pass.
On Nepean Point, a collision of history and geography
BY ROBERT SIBLEY
he view from Nepean Point is certainly panoramic. Sheltering from
wind and rain against the statue of
Samuel de Champlain, I gaze up
the Ottawa River.
On my left, the Rideau Canal and
above it, on a limestone bluff, the neogothic spires of the Parliament Buildings.
On the right, there is the Museum of Civilization and the highrises of Hull — or
Gatineau, as it is now called — and, in
the hazy distance, the blue line of the
Gatineau Hills. Ahead of me, the Portage
Bridge crosses the river and Victoria Is-
T
land rides like a green ship through the
grey water.
The point, I decide, provides the finest
view of the capital region. Indeed, I need
only turn around to take in the embassies
and government buildings along Sussex
Drive, the glass domes of the National
Gallery, the silver spires of Notre Dame
Basilica, the green oasis of Major’s Hill
Park, the fairy-tale towers of the Château
Laurier and the hulking U.S. embassy
looking like a landlocked aircraft carrier.
A fitting spot for beginning another
day of exploring Ottawa’s monuments.
From this promontory, you can’t help but
wonder at the confluence of geography,
history and politics that produced this
nation’s capital. Social historian Sandra
Gwyn’s lovely phrase comes to mind. Ottawa, she once wrote, is “an idea carved
out of the wilderness.”
Ignoring the rain like a true stalwart
explorer, I look up at Champlain, wondering if he might have found the view
inspiring, and what he might think if he
could see the country he helped create.
The statue, unveiled in 1915 by the
Duke of Connaught, shows the great explorer with his right arm extended and
an astrolabe in his hand, measuring the
angular altitude of the sun, trying to figure out his location.
PHOTOS BY CHRIS MIKULA, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
Champlain’s statue, unveiled by the Duke of Connaught in 1915, shows the
explorer with an astrolabe, figuring out his location. Sculptor Hamilton
MacCarthy, unlike Champlain, did not know how to use an astrolabe — the
statue holds it upside down.
It’s a work of fiction, so to speak, but not
unwarranted as a symbolic statement. So
far as I know, Champlain never actually
stood on this bluff, but he did pass by the
point in June of 1613 on his way up river,
searching for the passage that would lead
to the riches of the Orient. Sculptor
Hamilton MacCarthy’s stature commemorates this first passage. Unfortunately, MacCarthy, unlike Champlain, did
not know how to use an astrolabe — the
statue holds it upside down.
I’m fond of history’s moments of synchronicity, to borrow psychologist Carl
Jung’s concept, so I rather like the story
of Champlain’s astrolabe. Surely it’s no
coincidence Champlain lost the instrument on that 1613 journey while making a
portage a few kilometres south of Allumette Island, near Pembroke, and that
it was found, so the story goes, more than
250 years later — in 1867 no less — by a
14-year-old farm boy, Edward George
Lee. Fittingly, the astrolabe now resides
across the river in the Museum of Civilization.
Of course, Champlain wasn’t the only
explorer to travel the Ottawa River. Three
years earlier, in 1610, another French adventurer, Etienne Brulé, ventured up the
river on the way to the Great Lakes. In 1615,
the Recollet priest Joseph le Caron made
it across the Ottawa River’s rapids on his
way to Georgian Bay. But Champlain was
the first to map the river and name its
topographical features.
2
His journals, as historian David Hackett Fischer recounts in his recently published biography, Champlain’s Dream,
mark the confluence of the Gatineau and
Ottawa rivers and, farther south, Rideau
Falls pouring into the Ottawa and the
ridge of mountains we know as the Eardley Escarpment. He also remarks on the
river, describing it as “very beautiful and
wide,” its banks covered with “fine open
woods.”
Standing beneath Champlain’s statue,
I try to imagine the country he saw: Indian encampments along the banks of
the river, the thunderous rapids, the
vaulting sky and the forests that seemed
to stretch away forever. And then I look
around at the city that has come to pass.
I am not the first to imaginatively weld
past to present and try to extract meaning from the collision of history and geography.
Historian Donald Creighton captured
the strange marvel of this meeting of time
and space in a poetic passage describing
Confederation-era Ottawa. “Politics and
geography faced each other in an immediate and implacable confrontation. To
the north and west lay the enormous expanse of rock and water, forest and plain,
which made up the half-continent that
the new Dominion of Canada had inherited and hoped to occupy as its own. To the
south stood the Parliament that must try
to bring this new nation into effective being.”
The rain has let up. I take a final 360degree look at the river and its city, and it
comes to me that the city itself is a kind
of monument, “a set of ideas or order
and moderation and civility, realized in
the wilderness,” to borrow again from
Sandra Gwyn.
I like to think Champlain, a
visionary in his own right, saw something similar.
Robert Sibley is a senior writer
for the Citizen.