Orléans neighbours swim 20.7 km from Parliament to Petrie Island

Article content

Four hours, 58 minutes and 56 seconds may well be the record time for a team of relay swimmers to butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle the 20.7-km stretch of the Ottawa River from Parliament Hill to Petrie Island.

If it isn’t the record, it’s certainly the most recent time, as Orléans resident Jeff Mackwood and his wife, Gen, and five of their Chaleur Way neighbours made the lengthy, at times rain-soaked, swim on Sunday, in what must be one of the most unique sort of block-party activities.

Article content

Mind you, Chaleur Way, in Orléans’ Voyageur Park neighbourhood, is no ordinary street. Jeff, 65, is a former competitive swimmer who coaches open swimming and for five years has organized a friendly 7.3-km swim from the mouth of Green’s Creek to Petrie Island.

Gen, meanwhile, swam in national competitions when she was a teen, and in 2012 swam in the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, a 45-km open-water swim around Manhattan Island in New York. She currently also coaches.

And the neighbours aren’t slouches in the water, either. Jamie Wildsmith, who kicked off Sunday’s relay, grew up swimming competitively and held Eastern Canada age group swimming records.

Andrea Schwartz-Smith, who coaches age group swimmers as well as adults, swam for Canada at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. She has a tattoo of a maple leaf and the Olympic rings on her left thigh.

Her daughter, Addi, 14, swims competitively with Swim Ottawa, and recently took part in the Eastern Canadian championships. She also just earned her bronze medallion.

Sharon Donnelly also competed for Canada, in the 2000 Sydney Olympics as a triathlete, and coached the U.S. triathlon team in 2008 in Beijing.

Article content

And Donnelly’s daughter, second-year uOttawa student Gemma Rudnicki, who spent much of Sunday’s swim spotting from a kayak but also took on a turn in the water, used to swim competitively.

So when they loaded into a rented pontoon boat — captained by Schwartz-Smith’s husband, Shane — in Gatineau shortly after 7 a.m. Sunday, the question wasn’t whether they would complete the swim, but simply when.

(And, to a lesser degree, what each would do when they weren’t in the water. It’s hard to imagine many swim relays that include crocheting, for example, but that’s how Gen passed some of her time on the boat. Jeff, meanwhile, after experiencing some stubble-burn on his right shoulder from rubbing against his chin as he swam, took a few moments to shave. And Addi, in true teen fashion, was busy on her cellphone. When asked which she’d rather lose, her phone or a limb, she asked which limb. Turns out her phone is more valuable to her than her right leg below the knee.)

But back to the swim, which Jeff organized and dubbed the P-to-P swim. For most of his life, he’s lived close to the Ottawa River. “I’ve travelled the world,” he said, “but this is my favourite river.”

Article content

An Orléans resident since 1989, he’s long lamented that, apart from at only a few small, discrete spots — Britannia, Westboro and Petrie Island beaches, and just recently the NCC River House — very little of the Ottawa River is used by swimmers. “Lots of boat traffic, lots of people fishing. Stuff like that. But not a lot of swimmers, and it’s such a swimmable river.”

He began swimming a 1.8-km stretch of the river from Green’s Creek a few years back, eventually expanding that to the 7.3-km trip to Petrie Island. When he suggested Sunday’s relay, his swimming neighbours all quickly agreed to take part, although perhaps with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Schwartz-Smith, for example, is not fond of open swimming, preferring instead the predictability of pools. “I don’t want to see the bottom, and I don’t want to not see the bottom,” she said, describing the angst she goes through when swimming in rivers and lakes. “And there are no walls!”

Her daughter shares a similar apprehension. When Gen, in the normal course of conversation, asked the group how many of them had almost drowned at some point in their swimming careers (three, fyi, including Gen), Addi replied, “I’m about to drown!” before asking, “There are no sharks, right?”

Article content

There were no sharks, but there were a couple of hazards, including a downpour — “Only lightning will stop us,” insisted Jeff — and a boater who twice passed by far too close, once passing the swimmers on the wrong side.

But four hours, 58 minutes and 56 seconds after Wildsmith leapt into the river at the mouth of the Rideau Canal, the swimmers, having swum the last couple hundred metres together (with the exception of spotter Rudnicki), emerged victorious at Petrie Island.

“This was fantastic,” said Jeff, who hopes that the record of their time (if not their record time) might serve as the benchmark that will encourage others to organize similar swims to best it. “This just shows you how terrific the Ottawa River is, that you can do that. In how many other capital cities can you jump in the river and swim 20 kilometres without getting sick?”

“It was great to do something like this in our own backyard,” added Donnelly. “We’re all lucky that we’re able to swim, and it would be great if others were able to do this, even for just a small section of the river. This is one of the jewels of our city.”

An hour or so later, as the kayak was lifted from the boat at the Gatineau dock where it all began, the man who rented Jeff the boat asked, “So, how long did it take?”

“Four hours, 58 minutes and 56 seconds to swim from Parliament to Petrie Island,” Jeff told the man.

“What do you mean? he replied, astonished. “You swam?”

Article content