A Bit Of My Life

When I was about eight years old, my weekends consisted of bike rides on the many trails in Ottawa. My mother and I used to take a number of different trails, our favourites being along the Ottawa River and the Rockcliffe Parkway. After biking on one of these trails, we came to a never-before-discovered lake that appeared to have a swimming hole, as people were swimming there. Having not brought our suits, we resolved to come back the next day with them. There were no “No Trespassing” or other signs that we could see.

We were very excited about this, my mother as she liked to swim, and myself because I was eight and it all seemed like a grand adventure. I couldn’t believe that there was a pristine lake in the middle of Ottawa that a girl could swim in that wasn’t teeming with people. We were about to find out why.

The next day we got up early, put on our swimsuits under our clothes, and tucked towels into our baskets on our bikes. We tore off in the direction of the new discovery hell bent for election. It is here where I should interject and give you, the reader, the lay of the land that was 1980’s Ottawa, and to a large extent still is today. Ottawa isn’t just the home of politicians and erstwhile software companies. Back then, if you were someone who wanted to be seen, you bought a house in Rockcliffe Park. This meant that a few old money types hung around there while the rest vacated for the safe and equally exclusive but far less snobby climes of the Glebe. Rockcliffe Park was full of upper middle class and upper class types who liked to practice looking down their noses at people. The lake that we had discovered was, indeed, in Rockcliffe Park.

My mother and I were not Rockcliffe Park people. No, as she was a single mother and a lowly government clerk, we were pretty much the other end of the social and economic scale from Rockcliffe Park people. We lived in a house that I considered normal at the time in Gloucester, a three-bedroom townhome in a complex that housed scientists and workers from the nearby National Research Council headquarters and others who wanted affordable housing a good distance from Ottawa’s downtown. Our bike ride to Hemlock Lake took a good 30 minutes.

We ditched our bikes on the shore and got into the water. It was a perfect day, about plus 30 celsius. Perfect for swimming. I still remember the bathing suit I was wearing, a small red bikini with a gold anchor wheel on the belt. I was a cute child with blue eyes and long gold curls, just splashing in and enjoying the water. Everything was perfect until a group of swimmers got into the water on the other side of the small lake from us. A couple of them swam over, even though the distance was enough that it required some effort to do so.

“You have to leave. There is no trespassing on this lake”. One of the men declared, staring daggers at my mother while saying it. I was shocked. I looked up, my eyes wide at the missive of this stranger. I started swimming for the shore and our bikes, believing that he may have been correct. I was stopped by my mothers voice.

“The law says that you can’t own the lake. We have every right to swim here.” I suspected that my mother had known, whether through a sign that had escaped my attention or otherwise, that we would face some trouble. At the time I thought she was just trying to be brave, but as an adult I realize she was correct. All water is considered to be crown land and every individual has a right to swim in any natural Canadian lake.

“Look lady, people pay a lot of money to live here. That’s why you and your kid have to go now.” I decided that I should get into the fray with the rest of them at that point.

“Really mister, we just want to swim here today. We’ll go home and we won’t come back again, I don’t really want to swim in the same lake as a jerk like you anyway.” I piped up in my precocious eight-year-old cherubic voice.

The man was somewhat taken aback by this. Another woman had by this point swam across the lake, and was encouraging the two men who had swam over to us to leave it be and come back. He wasn’t having any of it. He stammered and said something to the effect of “you have to go now.”

I turned around and looked him dead in the eye. “What will you do to us if we don’t leave?” I asked.

“I’ll call the police!” He yelled, his ears turning red at this point.

“Go ahead and call the police on a kid swimming in a lake, mister.” I said. “I’m sure they’ll be here right away.” My mother was smiling throughout the whole exchange, and we swam away from the group, back towards our bikes. We didn’t get out of the water until they had swam back across the lake and they were going in themselves, about an hour later. As we got back on our bikes to leave, I asked my mother “Why didn’t they want us to swim here, Mom?”

“Some people think they are better than other people for different reasons; they think they are better than us because they can afford to live here and we can’t.”

I thought about that for a long time. It was an encounter that stayed with me for the rest of my life. I didn’t stay very long in classist, provincial Ottawa, choosing instead to migrate to Southern Ontario, where the people tended to act the same for the most part whether your dad was a mechanic or a vice-president at a major bank. Every time I go back, I take a drive down the Rockcliffe Parkway to see the same scenic sights I used to see from my bike seat, and to remind myself of why I will never move back there again.