Kìwekì Point damage caused by school bus driving along pathway
The NCC confirmed that a rogue school bus driver drove on the path illegally causing damage to the wooden panels of the structure at Kìwekì Point.
By Matteo Cimellaro, Ottawa Citizen
Published Dec 26, 2025 | Last updated 2 hours ago
Not even a year after the National Capital Commission (NCC) opened Kìwekì Point, significant damage to the new structure caused by a school bus driving “illegally” on a lookout pathway has left residents surprised.
The damage was found on Whispering Point, the lookout section over the Ottawa River and the Gatineau Hills, which provides an “architectural shelter with deep-seated nooks,” according to the NCC’s website.
Colin Churcher is an octogenarian who regularly walks the point from his home neighbourhood of the ByWard Market. It was his first time seeing the damage since the Ottawa Citizen pointed it out to him.
“It’s a wonderful lookout, even today, when it’s pretty cold, but that’s kind of bothersome,” Churcher said of the damage.
“It’s a pity because it’s taken a long time to get this whole thing done … and it’s a great shame that somebody has damaged it,” he added.
The Ottawa Citizen found more than 64 wooden panels were damaged in total, with indents, split wood and school-bus yellow paint scratched across the top of the structure.
Valérie Dufour, spokesperson for the NCC, confirmed with the Ottawa Citizen that there was “significant damage” on Whispering Point on Dec. 3.
Dufour said that the NCC was in contact with the police and had shared surveillance camera video showing “a school bus illegally driving on the Kìwekì Point Pathway.”
“We are in touch with the Kìwekì Point designer and fabricator teams in order to repair the structure as soon as we can,” Dufour added. “We will seek full monetary compensation for the damage caused.”
Todd Plaskacz was another local resident who saw that damage on his Boxing Day walk. He was hopeful that the fix could be easy to accomplish, as it was a wooden structure.
“You can clean it up and make it look pretty much the way it was, with minimal recognition by a tourist that anything bad had happened,” he said.
“But, obviously, an additional cost.”
Kìwekì Point was opened in May 2025 after five years of construction. The development cost a total of $45 million.
When it was opened, NCC CEO Tobi Nussbaum heralded the point in an Ottawa Citizen op-ed as a “confluence of the Ottawa, Gatinaeu and Rideau Rivers,” all of which were “trade routes, sites of diplomacy, and gathering places of the Algonquin Anishinabeg and neighbouring nations.”
In the op-ed, Nussbaum wrote that the newly redesigned point placed Algonquin history alongside that of Samuel de Champlain, whose statue used to be the site’s apex.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/kiweki-point-damage-school-bus
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