Cycling isn't just for urban types any more

 
By Joe Banks, The Ottawa Citizen May 25, 2011

Bicycles and Ottawa have become so common in verbal Band written references these days, I figured I'd be a good conformist and buy one. I'm a devoted car commuter, you see, and a rural resident for whom downtown cycling issues are as relevant as all-terrain vehicle etiquette is to Centretowners.

Actually the official rationale behind my acquisition was to help me to get in shape this summer, other than that of a pear. Unofficially, I bought it as a nod to the opening this spring of the Osgoode rail trail, this city's most historic transportation easement (my billing) and newly converted multiuse pathway.

Within Ottawa's city boundaries, it stretches from Buckles Street in Osgoode Village in the south to Leitrim Road in the north, more than 20 kilometres. It follows the old Prescott-Ottawa railroad bed, tidily groomed with compacted stone dust, ready now to accept bike riders from every corner.

It is, in fact, one of three urbanto-rural rail trails inside this city that, apart from the road system, will link all of this city's paths in a kind of web ringing and reaching out to points that, more than 15 decades ago, were reaching inward to the fledgling lumber camp.

The Ottawa-Carleton Trailway, running 35 kilometres from the west edge of Bells Corners to Carleton Place, was the first to open in 2000. With the Prescott-Russell Pathway running east-west from Anderson Road to the eastern city limits, plus the Osgoode trail, there is suddenly an uninterrupted network for rural cycling -and urban/ rural civic unity.

As healthy for our bodies and minds as these pathways promise to be, though, they are also nourishment for our historic soul. As the first railroad to reach Bytown in 1854, it's not a stretch to say the Osgoode trail is the land version of the Rideau Canal; in its northsouth orientation between the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa rivers, its importance as a freight route, and today, as a recreational corridor.

Both the Rideau Canal and the Prescott & Bytown Railroad became bridges between two of Canada's most important rivers, one by water, the other by land. And inside that bridge, strands of life and commerce were joined between farmers and their markets.

And in that process, what would become the two halves of Ottawa, were introduced, occasionally out of matters of life and death.

Exactly 100 years ago, Osgoode village was thriving as an industrial, commercial and farming centre, thanks largely to the railroad and the booming agricultural sector. All of the church congregations were bursting at the seams. Why, some villagers were even being served by phone through the North Gower exchange.

But like so many rural-based towns and villages throughout the country, its houses, businesses and outbuildings were mostly built from wood. The summer of 1911, and August in particular, was a hot and dry one, creating a perfect storm of conditions for the kind of devastating fire that seemed to happen to so many rural towns in prewar Canada.

The fire started in the wee hours, in a frame stable behind the Temperance Hotel owned by J.H. Nixon in the southwest corner of the village on Aug. 18. By the time it was over at 3 p.m., six businesses and two houses were destroyed, with a loss of $25,000 in 1911 dollars.

But had it not been for a fire engine and men provided by the City of Ottawa, transported by freight car along the very rail line we'll be biking, the entire village would have burned.

"The Ottawa contingent came out by special train on the CPR line, 21 miles away," the Kemptville Weekly Advance reported at the time. "When they arrived the flat car with the engine was placed on the railway tracks near the CPR which contains 47,000 gallons of water and a splendid stream was directed on the first fire till all danger was removed. The men then returned on the special train which brought them. It was after three o'clock before the residents breathed freely and knew the danger was past."

It would be the first of many linkages that have grown between there and here. Like the Rideau River, it has taken recreation to strengthen it.

Unfortunately, put "cycling" and "Ottawa" together in the same sentence, or in the same search engine, invariably words like "urban," "downtown," "bike lanes," "NCC," and more recently, "Capital Bixi" float to the top.

This newspaper's new "Citizen-Cycle" site is an indication of how much biking has become more than a pastime or fodder for the odd rant. It's now a routine part of this city's news mix; a 70-year-old cyclist is in serious condition after colliding with a minivan on Carling Avenue. A culvert collapse causes a detour for pedalists and pedestrians in Gatineau Park. The NCC is criticized for starting Bixi bike rental service when a private one already exists.

Rural Ottawa is today part of it. Thanks to decisions made so long ago, dog-walkers, pedestrians and cyclists can stretch their legs -and imaginations.

Joe Banks is a former rural Ottawa-area community newspaper editor and publisher who lives in Osgoode Village.

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