Ottawa Beaches

[lrt's friend]

Ottawa has changed over the last 100 years. We didn't understand pollution back in those days. There was no air conditioning, so urban beaches were relief from summer heat.

A friend of mine, who lived near Dutchie's Hole in childhood, told me of effluent being released into the Rideau from a slaughter house just upstream. Beach users had to flee when body parts flowed through the beach. Some of those body parts also got sucked into an outdoor pool at New Edinburgh. My brother came down with a communicable disease after swimming at Brewer Park. It is no wonder all those beaches on the lower Rideau closed, all around 1970.

Ottawa beaches were filthy back in the day, and today with better pollution controls, Ottawa's priorities are not to hire adequate numbers of life guards to man more beaches. One can also say that there are not enough candidates for life guards with today's aging population.