A STORIED HISTORY
housands of years before the Europeans arrived in North America, the Algonquin people used birch bark canoes to navigate the Ottawa River and its tributaries. The river served as a vital transportation and trade route for indigenous peoples and Europeans who later settled there. Despite its storied legacy, the earliest recorded descent of the rapids on the Ottawa would not happen until 1974, when Herman Kerckhoff and his 14-year-old daughter Claudia became the first known paddlers to descend the whitewater on what is now known as the Main Channel. Two
