River · Canada
Ottawa River
The Ottawa River is the main side river of the St. Lawrence in Canada. For most of its way it forms the border between the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and it flows right past Canada's capital, Ottawa.
Picture credit: P199 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · The Cosmonaut (CC BY-SA 2.5 ca) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Ottawa River?
The river starts here: Lake Capimitchigama in the Laurentian Mountains, Quebec.
It ends in the St. Lawrence River at Montreal (Lake of Two Mountains).
Countries on the river: Canada.
The story behind it
The Algonquin people call the river Kichi-Sìbì, which means ‘Great River’. About 400 years ago, French explorers such as Samuel de Champlain travelled up it, and it became one of the most important fur-trading routes in North America. Where the rapids were too wild, travellers had to carry their canoes over land. Later the river was busy with wood: huge rafts of logs floated downstream. To get the timber past the roaring Chaudière Falls in Ottawa, people built a wooden chute about 1.2 kilometres long, called a timber slide. It became a tourist attraction, and even the future King George V came to visit it. Today Canada's Parliament stands on a hill on the river's southern bank. Rafting boats bounce through foaming whitewater, and around 300 kinds of birds have been seen along the river. The American eel, once common here, has become rare.
Questions children ask
How long is the Ottawa River?
The Ottawa River is about 1 271 km long. On its way from Lake Capimitchigama to Montreal it drops about 370 metres.
Which provinces does the Ottawa River separate?
From Lake Timiskaming almost all the way to Montreal, the river forms the border between Ontario and Quebec. That is why the city of Ottawa lies on one bank and Gatineau, in another province, on the other.
What is a timber slide?
A timber slide is a wooden chute that lets logs slide past waterfalls and rapids. The most famous one, about 1.2 km long, led around the Chaudière Falls in Ottawa and even became a tourist attraction.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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