‘Freeing’ falls was part of Gréber’s grand vision

Jacques Gréber understood the importance of freeing Chaudière Falls from its man-made shackles, Lindsay Lambert says.

In his influential 1950 blueprint for the national capital, the famed French planner wrote that Chaudière Falls “will always remain the main feature of Ottawa’s natural setting.”

The time would come when the “heavy and obnoxious industries” then occupying the area would move to more appropriate sites, Gréber predicted. When that happened, he continued, a new central park centred on the falls would be the most effective improvement the capital could make.

Lambert couldn’t agree more. The 58-year-old Ottawa man is one of the people behind the “free the falls” petition on change.org. He has also filed an appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board over the City of Ottawa’s approval of Windmill Developments’ rezoning application for Chaudière and Albert islands.

“I don’t see how anybody gets the right to subvert the Gréber Plan in favour of development and hydro generation,” he says.

As far as Lambert is concerned, the Chaudière Falls don’t currently exist. “The Chaudière Falls were dammed in 1908,” he says. “That’s a dam.”

But now that industrial use of Chaudière Island has ceased, Lambert says, the falls could be restored to their original splendour by removing the ring dam that diverts water to the power stations.

“We’re the only national capital in the world with a major waterfall at its centre,” he says. “People have been waiting for this for years.”

Lambert argues that the falls, if freed, have far more value for tourism and commerce than they ever will if they remain dammed for electrical generation. And, he says, there are better options for getting power from the Ottawa River.

Vortical generators, which don’t require dams, can now be placed on river beds to generate electricity, he says.

There’s even an unfinished hydroelectric project upstream in the river, at Deschênes Rapids, Lambert says. In 1899, the Metropolitan Electric Company excavated a power channel at a cost of $500,000, but ran out of funds and abandoned the project.

The effort to free the falls has become “quite a big grassroots movement,” Lambert says. “People want to see a beautiful freed falls and a park.” But as long as the falls remained dammed, he says, attempts to improve public access to what remains of the falls are “not worth the effort.”