The Ottawa River flows from Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains west into Ontario and then southeast to Montreal and the St. Lawrence River. For 580 kilometres the river forms the border separating Ontario and Quebec.

For countless generations, the Ottawa River has served as a watery highway for First Nations peoples and, later, for European explorers. During the fur trade era, it provided a doorway to Canada’s western interior. In the early 19th century, logging transformed the Ottawa Valley, and the river filled with vast rafts of logs each spring.

Today, the Ottawa River provides drinking water for over a million people and sustains 85 different species of fish, including the increasingly rare river redhorse and lake sturgeon.

Nationally significant wood turtles and endangered musk turtles live on it shorelines. Meanwhile, its wetlands and floodplains support more than 300 bird species, as well as rare types of vegetation adapted to the river’s ebbs and flows.