QUIET CANOE RIDE WAS ROCKED BY MYSTERIOUS WAVES

Survivor attempts to get to the bottom of what happened on the Ottawa River

The river was glassy, the sunset ripe, the canoe still, the rod happily in hand — when this large, dark curl appeared on the water, maybe 100 metres away, like a whale’s back.

It was coming toward me, unexplained. There were no boats about, no wind, no apparent cause for this rogue wave on the wide Ottawa River at Constance Bay.

Out came the cellphone. Should they find me, days later, washed up on an island with Professor and Mary Ann, oh, yes, there would be video evidence of this minor shipwreck.

It lasted about 30 seconds. A couple of dozen waves, of which four of five were big enough to swamp a canoe — maybe a metre high at their peak, and quite close together. The bow of the canoe was, only accidentally, pointed at roughly 45 degrees, producing a rock and roll, a shimmy, a shake, but no great calamity.

OK, absent the passing Love Boat, what the hell was that?

I thought, stupidly, that the dam at Chats Lake had released a jeezly amount of water all at once, creating some kind of tidal wave.

(Water levels do fluctuate on the Ottawa, sometimes nightly, whereby we pretty much blame everything on the upstream dams.)

But several neighbours, all river watchers, told me the same thing upon seeing the video: boat, boat or boat, couldn’t be anything else.

Undeterred, we checked with the authorities.

“No, I have never heard of rogue waves on the river,” writes Michael Sarich, a regulation engineer with the Ottawa River Regulation Secretariat, an umbrella group representing the main interests in sustainable water flows on the long, multidam system.

“Water released from the Chats Lake dam is a significant distance upstream from your location and would have no effect. It certainly has been a wonderful summer to be out on the water, enjoy what’s left.”

Hummph. Clearly, he underplays the near-death experience of the river tsunami. Undeterred, we asked for numbers.

Ontario Power Generation reports flows through the Chats Falls dam were nothing special that day (Aug. 3) — in fact below normal — in what has been a rather average year. There was a blip around 5 p.m., when the volume rose from 551 cubic metres a second to 731, where it stayed for the next hour or so.

This was, however, the peak release for 48 hours. Aha! But, say the experts, this hardly explains a wave at 8:53 p.m., almost 16 kilometres downstream. In fact, we’re assured, the outflows from the generation plant don’t ever generate waves, though there is often a noticeable rise in elevation.

Undeterred, we asked a real riverman.

“We don’t get waves and never have, either,” said Don McColgan, when asked about the effect of outflows from Chats Lake.

Now 67, he’s been connected for roughly 50 years to the Quyon Ferry, which operates about four kilometres downstream of the dam, connecting Quyon, Que., to Fitzroy Harbour, Ont., and now owns it.

“As soon as (the water) comes through the chutes, it just spreads out.”

Undeterred, we asked him about weird, rogue waves that appear without any apparent source.

“Not that I can recall, and I’ve been down there one hell of a long time,” he said Monday.

Undeterred, he offered us some advice.

“You’ll be afraid to go out in a canoe now, with that Loch Ness Monster around.”

Undeterred, of course we’re going back out. It’s summer, at sunset, on a glassy river — a perfect storm for nature’s intrigue. To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com Twitter.com/ kellyegancolumn