Generating Station No. 4

Victoria and Chaudiere Islands lie in the Ottawa River between the cities of Ottawa and Gatineau.  These islands were the site of the lumber industry from the early 1800's when timber rafts were piloted down the rapids.  Later the water was harnessed for generating electricity and the lumber industry evolved from transferring logs to making matches and later paper.  Most of the industrial remains are not active and inaccessible except for this one generating station on Victoria Island.

The term "hydro" confuses people from outside Ontario.  Understandably so, as it isn't water, its' water generated electricity  The equipment in the sketch is used to adjust the stop logs in the dam and control the water flow to that particular generator's turbines - prosaically know as Generating Station No 4.

World Wide Sketchcrawl

October 15th was 33rd World  Wide Sketchcrawl day.  http://www.sketchcrawl.com/    All over the world people get together to go sketching.  Some cities, like Seattle have groups as large as 40 people.  Here in Ottawa there were only 2 of us, but I think we'll find some company for next time.

It was fun to meet another USK member, Greg Manley, and share observations.  Greg is an architect and painter.  His work can be seen at www.manleyart.com .  We met at the War Museum and even though the skies were threatening walked over to the old mill by Victoria Island.  There are some old dams and generating stations, even vestiges of the the logging industry such as log flumes in this area.

We did several sketches and our last location was on the roof of the War Museum.  It turns out Greg had been the site architect for the construction of this building, but hadn't been back for several years.  The view of the Ottawa skyline from here is quite 'central park', with the long grass on the Museum's green roof in the foreground.

A succesful day - did some sketching, didn't get rained on and made a friend.