Over 200 swimmers came out for the Ottawa Riverkeeper fundraiser event on Sunday.
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The first two swimmers to splash their way out of the Ottawa River at Lac Deschênes Sailing Club Sunday morning both spent the pandemic in the water.
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With the return of the Ottawa Riverkeeper Open Water Swim after a two-year hiatus came 14-year-old Charlie Anderson’s very first open water race. She clocked the top time (24 minutes, 16 seconds) in the 1.5-kilometre event. The competitive indoor swimmer has been training in open water since COVID-19 closed indoor pools, starting with morning swims at Britannia.
“It’s a whole new sport, it’s completely different, but … I like the rhythm better than just like, doing laps,” she said. “Having no walls or pace clock, it’s more relaxing.”
Finishing neck-in-neck with Anderson was Robert Landriault, who’s been swimming an open water circuit for the last handful of years. The worldwide Global Swim Series has taken him to Bermuda, Barbados, and Florida, but he’s been swimming competitively in Gatineau for the last 45 years.
“Fifty-seven years old and still swimming,” he said. “Tranquility. When you’re swimming, your head is in the water, you don’t have nothing at all, it’s nice and quiet.”
Landriault is retiring from the Canadian Armed Forces on Sept. 1 after 32 years of service and swimming will become his full-time focus, including some triathlons.
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Over 200 swimmers came out for the Ottawa Riverkeeper fundraiser event on Sunday, competing in 1.5- and 4-km distances in the river that stretches 1,271 kilometres from source to mouth.
The event hadn’t been held for two years due to the pandemic “and it’s just incredible to have the swimmers back out in the water” said Ottawa Riverkeeper CEO Laura Reinsborough.
The fundraiser supports the independent charity’s activities, which range from water quality reporting for over 300 beaches in the Ottawa River watershed via swimguide.org to advocacy to protect the American eel, which make their way to the Ottawa River and other Canadian waterways between the beginning and end of their lives in the North Atlantic’s Sargasso Sea.
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Shawville’s Jennifer Haughton was the top individual fundraiser for the event, bringing in over $1,100 ahead of her 1.5-km race. A Riverkeeper volunteer, she grew up in Woodroffe North, lived for a while in Pembroke, and now calls the Bristol, Que. area home, “so the river’s always been part of my life,” she said.
“I’ve been so fortunate… I’ve swam here, I’ve swam Deep River, I’ve paddled from Pembroke to Petawawa, from the Madawaska, the Coulonge. I’ve, you know, visited so many places in the watershed… the Ottawa River means a lot to me.”
The event had raised more than $12,750 as of Sunday, exceeding its $10,000 target.
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