ON Highway itinerary: Mattawa to Ottawa

Elevation Chart

Highway Notes

Itinerary

Here is the itinerary for the 304 km along Highway #17 between Mattawa and Ottawa

From Mattawa south, the Ottawa Valley is a generally wide and fertile tongue into the Canadian Shield. The Ottawa River draws water from such a large area, there are actually two spring flood seasons, the first for meltwaters from southern Ontario, and the second (just over a month later) for meltwaters from northern Quebec.

Between Chalk River, home of Canada’s Atomic Energy Research Facility, and Petawawa the highway passes through a Sand Plain zone, formed by an ancient river delta. The vegetation here is mostly jack pine with blueberry bushes, about the same as on the sandy Cape Cod seashore of Massachusetts. The land transitions into the training area for CFB (Canada Forces Base) Petawawa, which is why the telephone poles are so low to the ground alongside the highway.

Just east of Rolphton is the Des Joachims Dam, the larges hydro-electric generating station along the Ottawa River. Driftwood Provincial Park, 8 km upstream on Holden Lake has rock outcrops with gneiss and granite, and lots of small creatures like rabbits and porcupines. At Pembroke you will find Canada’s first hydro-electric dam, still operating and generating since 1889, and the city is decorated with murals showcasing the city’s history.

Around Cobden, the valley widens significantly, and the wide fertile valleys have been farmed since the early 1800s. There is a rough Morraine zone around Renfrew, with rocks and ridges left behind from the last Ice Age. Around Arnprior, the good farmland returns with rich soils around the Mississippi and Madawaska Rivers. As you pass over the Madawaska , you’ll see a hydro dam on the west side of the highway, and shortly you cross the Mississippi s on a high bridge over the wide river.  These rivers were the heart of early Ottawa Valley lumber industry, which in the 1840s led to the establishment of Ottawa and Hull (now Gatineau).

Just west of Kanata, as it passes the interchange with Highway 7, the “Southern Route of the Trans-Canada” (which takes travellers west to Peterborough and Orillia, north of Toronto),  the highway passes through a Limestone Ridge zone, where there are very shallow soils on top of exposed limestone from 200-450 million years ago. These will be exposed at rock cuts at the sides of he highway (at Kanata.  it also takes on the name “Queensway” which is the 417 route through Ottawa.  At Kanata, you see  a cluster of glass-covered office towers for the many high-tech companies headquartered there. This community has grown up from basically bare pasture since the 1970s.

After Kanata, the urban density picks up when you the 416 Interchange, which takes  travellers sough to the St Lawrence and Highway 401 at Prescott, Ontario with a bridge over the St Lawrence  to Ogdensburg, New York. Then you pass Bayshore Shopping Centre , just north of the highway, Ottawa’s IKEA store on the south side, pass over a Transitway/greenspace as you pass through Ottawa. When you see pretty Dow’s Lake to the south, the next few exits will take you into downtown Ottawa.

Ottawa Visitor Tip: don’t just visit Ottawa, but head across the River into Gatineau (the municipality) and into Gatineau Park, and drive the Gatineau Parkway up into the Gatineau Hills, where there are a number of attractions, including the Belvedere Lookout (“Belvedere” is French for lookout, so its kind of redundant bilingualism, but hey!) shown above.

Trans-Canada History: Ottawa to Montreal