When Google Maps launched in 2005, Ron McKinnon started training his bird’s-eye view on Ottawa’s fancy Rockcliffe Park area.
A software programmer living in nearby Overbrook, McKinnon grew up in the city but had no idea — until the map-viewing tool came along — that Rockcliffe was home to both McKay Lake and an adjacent small swimming hole.
Curious, he biked over there, noting the signs warding off boaters and warning people not to stray from the walking path along the lake’s fenced-off eastern shore.
Then McKinnon noticed what he describes as “cottage country” on the lake’s western side: docks and wooden staircases leading to people’s homes. In the years since, he’s seen people swimming in the lake too, he said.
A question has nagged at him ever since, one he recently posed to CBC’s This Is Ottawa podcast:
“Why is there accessibility on one side [of the lake] and why is it closed off on the other?”
The lay of the land
The answer to McKinnon’s question requires diving headfirst into the lake’s complicated footprint.
According to the City of Ottawa and Rawlson King, the city councillor representing the neighbourhood, all of McKay Lake, including the western shoreline, falls under the city’s Caldwell-Carver Conservation Area. The area is home to songbirds, turtles, a variety of waterfowl and other wildlife.
But the lake itself is divided into two jurisdictional halves.
The western half, including its deep bottom, is owned by private landowners in Rockcliffe, while the eastern side is owned by the City of Ottawa. The city also owns the walking trail and forest along the lake’s eastern shore and the pond just east of the lake.
Who owns which half of the lake governs who can do what and where.
Swimming and recreational activities are not allowed on McKay Lake’s east side, though unsupervised swimming is permitted in the pond — originally a sand and gravel pit — every day between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m.
According to the city, recreational “public use” activities on the lake would damage the marsh, contribute to shoreline erosion and disrupt wildlife species and their habitat, as happened when a makeshift dock built on the east side many years ago caused damage that cattails have yet to fully recover from.
Jennifer Bell was out swimming in the pond one recent morning, as she tries to do up to five times a week during the summer.
Bell loves it there because it’s quiet but said it would be “lovely” to swim in the lake too, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic led more people to the pond — or, as another swimmer described it to CBC, the “best kept secret in Ottawa.”
But she also understands the need for conservation.
“To me … the big key priority would be protection, so if there were any access it would need to be going through the [Rockcliffe Park Residents Association] environmental committee so it was managed carefully,” Bell said.
Public swimming is currently not allowed in the lake for safety reasons, according to both the city and the residents association.
According to a report last year by the association’s environment committee, people can’t swim in the east side of the lake because its bottom is “oozy/squishy/mushy.”
“The ooze is quite deep and someone could sink in and drown/suffocate,” the report said.
Landfill activities several decades ago also mean there are likely hazardous materials under the eastern shoreline, the city added.
At the same time, the people who live on and own property on the lake’s west side are allowed to be in the lake, said Iola Price, the chair of the environment committee.
Why is there accessibility on one side [of the lake] and why is it closed off on the other side?– Ottawa resident Ron McKinnon
There are 13 houses, two of which are vacant, on the lake’s western shoreline, and their occupants self-limit their use of the water, Price said.
While there are docks on the lake, as Google Maps shows, Price said no motorboats are allowed on the water and the lake is only home to kayaks and seldom-used canoes.
The docks are vacant most of the time, but Price does see people sitting and reading there.
“There are no rules, but the lakeside owners practice good sense and good usage without being told they have to,” Price said via email.
LISTEN / More on Rockcliffe Park’s McKay Lake from CBC News’ This Is Ottawa podcast
‘A quiet, tranquil place’
Still, how did the McKay Lake area come by its divided personality?
Part of the answer dates to the 1960s. That’s when residents of the pre-amalgamation Village of Rockcliffe Park grew concerned about garbage dumping on the lake’s marshy eastern shore, Price said.
According to the residents association, the conservation area is named after Ewan Caldwell and Humphrey Carver, who helped plan the restoration work undertaken after the dumping caused damage to the shoreline and the bird and fish habitat in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
There were court actions and a government-issued stop-work order against the developer, who was accused of improper infilling, Price said.
Residents even followed some trucks leaving the lake to prove they were getting material from a garbage dump, the Ottawa Journal reported in 1973.
“If there is one word or perhaps a phrase that describes how the residents feel about McKay Lake, it is a sense of stewardship,” said Price, a retired federal government biologist, said via email.
All the land in the area was privately-owned until a compromise was reached in the early 1980s.
In exchange for being allowed to build condominiums southeast of the pond, the developer agreed to hand over land that eventually fell under the conservation area, according to a McKay Lake management plan that Price helped write.
When Rockcliffe Park amalgamated into Ottawa in 2001, those lands became the city’s, and other lands that were always private remained private, Price said.
“This is just a quiet, tranquil place that is wonderful for wildlife, and it’s worth preserving,” she told This Is Ottawa host Robyn Bresnahan from the forest.
Gordon Rogers, who lived beside the lake in 1994, put it this way when speaking to the Ottawa Citizen that same year:
“Do we prohibit it? No. Do we promote? No. Is it protected? Yes. Could it be destroyed? Yes.”
McKinnon, who has “very occasionally” used the pond since learning about it, said he and his family would visit the area “all the time” if the lake was open to everybody.
“I drag [the kids] against their will to do outdoor things,” he said. “But once they get there, they really like it.”