Summer reading: The healing power of 'blue space' infuses Water Borne

Ottawa Citizen

3 days ago

Article content
Welcome to the Ottawa Citizen's summer reading file, where we'll feature new work by a local author once a week.
Article content
Dan Rubinstein is an Ottawa-based writer, editor and stand-up paddleboarder (not necessarily in that order). His first book, Born To Walk, was a finalist at the City of Ottawa Book Awards and Kobo Emerging Writer prize. This piece was excerpted from Water Borne: A 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage, published in June by ECW Press.
Article content
In 2023, Ottawa writer Dan Rubinstein completed a round-trip journey, via stand-up paddleboard, from Ottawa to Montreal, New York, Toronto and back to Ottawa. The 10-week expedition allowed him to explore and appreciate the aquatic environment around us. Here's an excerpt from chapter One of Water Borne:
Article content
Petrie Island, about a dozen miles east of downtown, is one of my regular destinations when I paddle on the Ottawa (River). A park that's connected to the shore by a causeway, it's the farthest I can go on a one-way inflatable SUP excursion and still catch a bus home (or, rather, two buses and an LRT train — an ordeal that can take longer than the downriver run). But I'm not riding public transportation this Monday morning in early June. Lisa, my wife, is driving me to Petrie so I can start paddling east.
Article content
'We'll be going against rush-hour traffic,' I tell her, smiling sheepishly as I load my deflated board into the car. 'You'll make it home in time to bike to the office like usual.'
Article content
Article content
I don't point out, mind you, that she'll be bogged down in stop-and-go highway traffic on the way back. And I look the other way when we pass through a construction zone that'll delay her even more.
Article content
Article content
Considering my impending absence for most of the next four months, and the parenting and domestic load that she'll be shouldering solo all summer, this morning's drop-off is a minor inconvenience. Yet Lisa instantly and enthusiastically said 'go for it' when I first mentioned my embryonic idea. Throughout two decades of parenthood together, we've taken turns springing one another for projects away from home. She's a writer, too, and, possessing an emotional intelligence far superior to mine, understands that without a creative and/or physical relief valve, my complaints, about the ennui of nine-to-five work and workaday life in general, will inevitably reach an insufferable crescendo.