Summer reading: The healing power of 'blue space' infuses Water Borne

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Welcome to the Ottawa Citizen’s summer reading file, where we’ll feature new work by a local author once a week.

Dan Rubinstein is an Ottawa-based writer, editor and stand-up paddleboarder (not necessarily in that order). His first book, Born To Walk, was a finalist at the City of Ottawa Book Awards and Kobo Emerging Writer prize. This piece was excerpted from Water Borne: A 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage, published in June by ECW Press.

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In 2023, Ottawa writer Dan Rubinstein completed a round-trip journey, via stand-up paddleboard, from Ottawa to Montreal, New York, Toronto and back to Ottawa. The 10-week expedition allowed him to explore and appreciate the aquatic environment around us. Here’s an excerpt from chapter One of Water Borne:

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Petrie Island, about a dozen miles east of downtown, is one of my regular destinations when I paddle on the Ottawa (River). A park that’s connected to the shore by a causeway, it’s the farthest I can go on a one-way inflatable SUP excursion and still catch a bus home (or, rather, two buses and an LRT train — an ordeal that can take longer than the downriver run). But I’m not riding public transportation this Monday morning in early June. Lisa, my wife, is driving me to Petrie so I can start paddling east.

“We’ll be going against rush-hour traffic,” I tell her, smiling sheepishly as I load my deflated board into the car. “You’ll make it home in time to bike to the office like usual.”

I don’t point out, mind you, that she’ll be bogged down in stop-and-go highway traffic on the way back. And I look the other way when we pass through a construction zone that’ll delay her even more.

Considering my impending absence for most of the next four months, and the parenting and domestic load that she’ll be shouldering solo all summer, this morning’s drop-off is a minor inconvenience. Yet Lisa instantly and enthusiastically said “go for it” when I first mentioned my embryonic idea. Throughout two decades of parenthood together, we’ve taken turns springing one another for projects away from home. She’s a writer, too, and, possessing an emotional intelligence far superior to mine, understands that without a creative and/or physical relief valve, my complaints, about the ennui of nine-to-five work and workaday life in general, will inevitably reach an insufferable crescendo.

We pull into a practically empty parking lot beside the beach, where the sand has been raked into a mesmerizing carpet of Zen. A good sign. Footsteps of weekend visitors expunged, a blank canvas ahead. It’s mild — not too hot, not too cold — with almost no wind. Favourable conditions for the 30 miles I’m hoping to paddle today. There’s a guy on the water doing some sprint training on his SUP. Another good omen. The skies are very hazy, however, choked with forest-fire smoke that has drifted into the Ottawa Valley from Quebec. I smell charred wood and get an acrid, ashy tang at the top of my throat. Local health authorities have issued air quality warnings. Schools have cancelled outdoor activities. And it’s just the start of a wildfire season that will ultimately become the most ruinous ever in Canada, at least for now.

Not a good sign.

But I’m not bothered by the smoky bouquet as I pump up and load my board. After months of planning, I’m stoked to finally be hitting play. And I know that regardless of the risks ahead (a rather banal list that includes sunburn, sunstroke and broken sunglasses) this is a wholly privileged endeavour. As a white man, I’ll blend in more than somebody with Black or Brown skin and likely won’t face the type of unwanted attention that could endanger a woman travelling alone. To ensure that my body was ready, I had the time to run, lift weights and, depending on the season, cross-country ski or paddle far too many miles for somebody with a job and a family. Even accounting for the middle-aged, not-listening-to-my-body back/leg/muscle/nerve injury that sent me to the emergency room in an ambulance less than a year ago, I’m in the best shape of my life. The credit card in the Ziploc bag that will serve as my wallet all summer helps too.

I’ve chosen Petrie as my launch point for a few reasons.

First, I’ve paddled the stretch of river from downtown to this park many times, including two training runs with all of my gear not long after the ice had melted. (I walked from my house to a nearby bus stop, rode a few blocks downhill to the Rideau, put in beside a busy bridge, ran a set of rapids and paddled about five miles to the Ottawa, portaged a mile to a rowing club and then paddled another twelve — and then the ungainly bus-train-bus rigamarole home, easily the hardest part, lugging my bags through the after-work transit station bustle.) So there’s no need to cover this stretch again.

Second, why not prune my total distance wherever possible, within reason? Remember, this is not a man-slam-dunking-on-nature quest. My ground rules for this trip wouldn’t satisfy Guinness World Records scrutineers, and I’m fine with covering most but not necessarily all of the route under my own power. Partially because I’m setting up meetings at various stops, and though I would like to surrender wholeheartedly to natural rhythms, normal people have schedules to keep and are not obstacles but central to my journey. Partially to avoid injury.

Third, Petrie makes sense because I usually stop paddling here and am always tempted to keep going. To see what’s around the next bend.

I kiss Lisa and glide away from the beach under an eerie yellow dome, a blurry smudge of sun reflecting on the glassy bluish-brown water. The river is almost a mile wide here, and the lazy late-spring current doesn’t provide much of a boost. Settling into a moderate cadence, my thoughts begin to wander.

I usually stop paddling here and am always tempted to keep going. To see what’s around the next bend.

After scooting past one of the ferries that make the short trip back and forth from shore to shore, I’m beside a row of luxurious houses lining the northern, Quebec side. For about two thirds of its length, the Ottawa forms the boundary between two provinces, with residential and recreational properties on long stretches of both shorelines. Contemplating the pair of “hundred year” floods this region has experienced in the past decade — floods that swamped several thousand homes and caused millions of dollars in damages, floods that are prompting insurance companies to stop issuing policies and lenders to stop offering mortgages — I wonder how much this jurisdictional line matters. And whether these homes (these provinces, for that matter) will even exist by the start of the next century.

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While providing no insights, my first day of paddling is a reprieve from global-crisis angst, like leaping into a lake on a suffocatingly hot day. Eight hours, 30 easygoing miles. Osprey and eagles overhead, herons and ducks and geese galore, songbirds in the shoreline trees. I swim and stop to eat a sandwich while sitting on my board, legs dangling into the water, cattails tickling my ears, holding the slightly sulfurous aroma in my lungs and feeling the loam begin to accumulate beneath my fingernails. Already, my skin seems to be developing a grungy, glistening film of perspiration, soil and eau de toilette rivière — maybe a catalyst, the moment of inception, when Swamp meets Thing. I say hello, aloud, to a fox and later bid adieu to an otter. Why not talk to animals? I’m already getting a little lonely, and hours go by when I make more eye contact with these locals than with the two-legged kind.

I reach a marina campground in a small Quebec town not long after four o’clock. Setting up my site on a grassy field beside the river is simple, and I stroll up to the main street supermarket for a cold beer to savour with the first of far too many dehydrated suppers-in-a-bag. I actually like freeze-dried camp meals. But after a few days, whether pork pad Thai or broccoli and cheddar pasta, they all start to taste the same. Worse, the plentiful gas smells the same.

By the time my bowels stop gurgling and the smoke-shrouded crimson sun dips below the hills, I’m ready for bed. Zipped into my tiny, malodourous tent, I’m drifting off to the muted sounds of FM rock radio from the car of somebody fishing on the pier. Then an HVAC unit behind the nearby fromagerie clicks into gear, and I toss and turn until the next fuzzy sunrise.

Excerpted from Water Borne: A 1,200-mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage, ECW Press, 2025.

What Dan Rubinstein is reading

I’m currently reading Theory of Water by Nishnaabeg writer, scholar and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Even though my book Water Borne is out in the world, I’m deeply immersed in aquatic literature these days. Theory of Water is a powerful and profound book that explores the web of relationships between humans and all living things and the importance of considering the holistic impact of our decisions beyond the confines and goalposts of racial capitalism.