Ten years of crossing Adàwe celebrated with cookies and hot chocolate

Noah Leafloor & Christine Aubry

 

Sandy Hill and Overbrook neighbours met on the Adàwe Crossing on the evening of December 4 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the opening of the pedestrian bridge across the Rideau

River. Action Sandy Hill and the Overbrook Community Association brought cookies, which were complemented with hot chocolate donated by Working Title and the Rideau Sports Centre. Stéphanie Plante and Rawlson King, City councillors for the wards joined by the bridge, addressed the crowd. King recalled the bridge’s grand opening back in 2015 when he was one of the first people to walk across it.

Steven Boyle, former senior project manager with the City of Ottawa, also spoke during the event. He told the crowd that metal wires embedded in the bridge track each crossing and can even distinguish between pedestrians and bicycles. As of December 6, the counters had tracked 9.2 million crossings over the last 10 years, specifically, 6 million pedestrians and 3.2 million cyclists. “So far, 2024 has seen the highest number of trips in a calendar year with over 1,030,000 trips,” said Boyle. “Depending on how usage tracks over the next couple of weeks, we could be close to hitting that one million milestone again for 2025.” If you want to check for yourself, the information is available on the City of Ottawa’s open data portal at open.ottawa.caopen.ottawa.ca.

Sandy Hill resident Sabrina Mathews took advantage of the gathering to hand out pamphlets for the upcoming Winter Solstice Lantern Walk on December 21. When asked how this annual tradition came to be, Matthews replied, “The first time, I had spread the word: come to the bridge. Lots of people came, it was really fun!” Commenting on the bridge, she remarked, “This crossing has been a wonderful piece of infrastructure, the way it connects the communities and helps us benefit from the beauty of the river.”

Overbrook resident Deborah Doherty also commented: “This is a celebration of a great pedestrian crossing that links us to uOttawa, where I volunteer and sing, but also to downtown. It was great to work with ASH on this event and celebrate community efforts on both sides of the river, activities like eradicating invasive plants and increasing native plants.” Doherty volunteers with the OCA gardening team and also with Bird Friendly Ottawa. “I should also mention,” she added, “what a great birding hotspot this is with the arctic birds that winter on the Rideau River.”

The name Adàwe was chosen because it is an Algonquin word that means “to trade.” It is indeed a fitting name for this crossing that continues to connect two communities over a river that otherwise separates them.