Taking Quebec from L'Orignal / Ontario

May 24th 2008. Landing at the camping of L'Orignal (the moose) village in Ontario around 80 km upstream Montreal Island on the Ottawa river. Quebec is across the river and the Ottawa river is the frontier between Ontario and Quebec. Coming at this level upstream the Ottawa river takes as much time coming from Montreal Island if you use the Quebec side or the Ontarion side. 

Today the idea was to cross the Ottawa river and go as far as we could upstream the riviere Rouge which is a primary tributary of the Ottawa river. Rouge river ends in the Ottawa river below the bridge on the picture.

Above: canoe landing spot is circled. Colored code map is from canoeing association Fédération Québécoise de Canot-Camping.

Above: I used to have a hunting canoe as I was thinking it was well suited for multi-types of canoeing. But of course it sucked in rivers. Now I solved the problem by using a river canoe with straping gears (not used here) that suits all the different types of canoeing I do (river, lake, ocean-like, coastal ocean (one day)).

Above: The river crossed, we can guess by the geography that there must be a river ending in front of us. There are two bridges to go under before we start going upstream the riviere Rouge.

Above: Riviere Rouge in sight. Will crossing soon the car bridge. Car bridges are easy to recognize with their typical concrete pillars. Concrete is a wonder material when you don't want infrastructures to last. This is contrary to stoned pillar structure typically used to build train bridges in Quebec (picture bellow).

Above: Train bridges of this type are all over the place in Quebec contry side. They are standing structures that glorify the engineers of the 1920-1950 years. Please come back guys, our crumbling concrete structures needs you.

Above: A zoomed out view of the train bridge.

Above: That is the most upstream the Rouge river we were willing to go. Time for a beer and for a chill out. Later we though we could use the river canoe and cross on the river upstream (on the picture) and go down along the shore across us and then come back up where we are sitting by using the counter-current. D'oh ! not at all. The current to cross above on the picture was way to strong so we ended up being eaten by the big wave in front of us on the picture. After being spitted out the mouth of the wave we went down along the whole path we did upstream and ended up bellow the bridges. Ouf ! It was a 10-15 min long drifting since the current was too strong to get to the shore. That was so stupid of us. I even lost my Arizona State cap because of this (see picture below).

Above: Went evaluate the current where we were planning to cross (I still have my Arizona State cap). In the end my evaluation was so off I wonder what went wrong with me. I am not an expert canoer on rivers but I have still a lot of experience. This part of the red River is raftable. What were we thinking given we had an open canoe in such wavy current. Too much sun from that day maybe.

Above: Preparing  to cross was the last chapter of that canoe day beside recrossing the Ottawa river to Ontario and than driving back to Montreal.