Chaudière light show set to begin
Spectacle pays tribute to area’s First Nations
For the first time in more than a century, residents of Ottawa and Gatineau will be able to walk to the edge of the Ottawa River’s majestic Chaudière Falls straddling the provincial border and get a good look at the rushing water.
Later this week, the falls will be awash with light and sound with the start of a free nightly show called Mìwàte created to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday. When the month-long show is over, the new viewing platform will continue to allow the public to get close to one of the region’s most striking natural features.
Public access to Chaudière Falls off Booth Street has been blocked by decades of industrial use of the adjoining islands for paper plants, logging and hydroelectric stations.
The viewing platform is part of a larger transformation of the area that is the heart of Ottawa’s industrial past and a sacred spot for Aboriginals for centuries. The controversial billion-dollar Zibi development on Chaudière and Albert Islands and the Gatineau side of the Ottawa River shoreline will add condos, townhouses, stores, offices, plazas, parks and bike paths in the coming years.
Mìwàte is a tribute to Indigenous people, created in collaboration with the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation. Representatives from local Métis and Inuit communities were also consulted.
Don’t expect a typical soundand-light show, says Ottawa 2017 director Guy Laflamme. Lights illuminating the falls will be accompanied by a “soundscape” of original music, including drumming, melodic chanting, flutes and the whispers of Aboriginal youths reciting in Anishinaabe, the language of the Algonquin people.
“I don’t want to sound esoteric, but it will be pretty close to a spiritual experience on-site,” he predicts. “We want to create this communion between the falls and the spectators, and get people to better appreciate and understand why this is considered a sacred site for Indigenous people.
“We see this as one more element in the reconciliation with Indigenous people.”
Laflamme says Mìwàte will be a “great legacy” that he recommends the city continue in years to come. Ottawa 2017, the agency responsible for planning city events to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday, sponsored the $700,000 show with Hydro Ottawa.
Mìwàte, which means “dazzled by a light or fire,” was created by Moment Factory, the edgy company that produced Kontinuum, the hit light show staged in the half-constructed underground LRT tunnel last summer.
Laflamme said the creators rejected cliché and “decided to go with a more modern, upbeat and at times techno version of Indigenous music, integrating voices and words.”
The score includes a haunting song from the Wildflowers, a group of teenage female drummers and singers recorded live at Pikwàkanagàn, near Golden Lake, and “enlivened with all the multimedia tricks we could,” says soundscape co-ordinator Vincent Letellier. There is also a couple of songs from Ottawa supergroup A Tribe Called Red, whose raw power is the perfect complement to the sight of the water flowing down the falls, he says.
The Mìwàte experience begins just north of the Canadian War
Museum on Booth Street with a series of 13 panels — a nod to both the 13 scales on a turtle’s back and the number of moons in the Indigenous calendar — that explore the Indigenous history of the area.
“We wanted to make sure this was not a whitewash of history,” Laflamme says. One of the panels explains that the Algonquins and their ancestors have lived in the Ottawa Valley for 10,500 years, with their own governance, spirituality, trade networks and abundant natural resources. When Europeans arrived 500 years ago, they brought disease, governance based on “expansion and exploitation” and “programs of Indigenous cultural genocide,” which had a devastating effect on Indigenous people, the panel says.
There will be fire pits burning cedar. As spectators cross a footbridge and walk toward the falls, they will hear sound from all sides, and be immersed in smoke and light, Laflamme says. The lights will include “cool special effects.”
“It will be light years away from the static — no disrespect to Niagara Falls — but it will be a totally different kind of experience,” he explains. “It will be dynamic.”
The viewing platform, built by Hydro Ottawa as part of an expansion of its hydroelectric generating station, offers an unobstructed view of the falls, Laflamme says. “We’ve all seen the falls from the Chaudière Bridge, but when you get to have access right on the edge, it’s quite a dramatic, spectacular experience.”
To help visitors imagine the wildness of the falls before a dam was built around them in 1910 to divert water to power stations, there will be no lights on the dam during the show.
“We get you to almost forget that there is a dam. The projections, the lighting, is really focusing on the falls and the limestone outcrop. We want to celebrate the natural beauty and reduce as much as possible the visibility of the dam.”
The 10- to 15-minute production will repeat in a loop.
The entire experience, including viewing the panels and walking to the viewing platform, will take 30 to 40 minutes, Laflamme estimates.
It hasn’t been decided how much longer the viewing area will remain open as winter approaches. Spray from the falls could make the concrete walkways icy. But the platform will be open next spring, says Hydro Ottawa spokesman Daniel Séguin.