Kichi Zībī as Public Code: Heritage, Jurisdiction, and the Ottawa River

Stent and Laver, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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This post is a part of the Canadian Heritage River series. We continue to welcome proposals about Canadian heritage rivers.

For many readers, the Ottawa River is a waterway that passes through the nation’s capital, paralleling parkways, crossing bridges, running beside hydro dams, passing mill sites, and abutting government buildings. The river also serves as a boundary between jurisdictions, and the Ontario portion now holds the Canadian Heritage River designation for its outstanding cultural heritage values. In 2016, Parks Canada summarized the designation through four linked elements: Algonquin First Nations history and presence, the river’s role as a travel route, the history of forest industries, and the record of hydro development.1 In this post, I discuss three practical suggestions to guide the discussion of heritage rivers: heritage communication can state jurisdiction more clearly, treat naming and public process as part of the river’s interpretive record, and preserve review and revision in a durable public form. These suggestions open the way for a more inclusive, iterative, and reciprocal heritage river designation process as well as policy.

Designation establishes responsibility through a defined heritage record. In the Ottawa River case, the Canadian Heritage Rivers System (CHRS) profile identifies a Heritage Reach, assigns Ontario as the participating jurisdiction, and records the river’s “heritage values” in documents that communities and agencies can use and revise. The reach follows the boundary river from Lake Timiskaming to East Hawkesbury and constitutes the Ontario portion of a shared corridor.2

Public code names the public-facing forms through which institutions teach readers how to interpret place, jurisdiction, and responsibility. Plaque sentences, profile paragraphs, map legends, road signs, environmental assessment narration, and public interfaces to geographic information systems (GIS) show readers how to identify stewardship obligations and the scope of official recognition. On the Ottawa River, those forms place one shared waterway within multiple jurisdictions, agencies, and public records, bringing the Canadian aporetic condition into view through the everyday language of heritage communication.3 The sections that follow trace that public language through designation, naming, and film.

Blueprint map showing the Ottawa River at the center with land parcels on each side, emphasizing the river’s boundary function.
Map 1: The Ottawa River between parts of the Counties of Prescott and Argenteuil. From Georgian Bay Canal Surveys [cartographic material], 1907. Library and Archives Canada. Copyright expired.

Designation as an Administrative Partition

In 2016, the CHRS Ottawa River profile identified the Ontario portion as a 590-kilometre Heritage Reach extending from Lake Timiskaming to East Hawkesbury.4 The Ottawa River Heritage Designation Committee documented the nomination and planning process in the 2009 Heritage Strategy and related records.5

A blueprint map from 1907 provides a plan view of the Ottawa River valley between what were then the Counties of Prescott and Argenteuil. The river runs through the centre of the image, and the parcels on either side frame it as a boundary and an administrative corridor. The map gives visual form to the same jurisdictional logic that later shaped the Heritage Reach designation.

Plaques, Profiles, and Naming

That administrative frame also shapes the public language used to interpret the river. Profile paragraphs, plaque text, and lists of heritage values condense a long and layered record into portable, quotable, and reproducible forms. In the Ottawa River case, the Parks Canada release and the CHRS profile place Algonquin presence, travel routes, forest industries, and hydro development within one public frame. Institutional web pages and story maps extend the same interpretive work by arranging heritage themes in a navigable sequence and teaching readers how to move through the river’s official record.6

The wording of a profile shapes how readers understand the scope of heritage recognition. The Ottawa River profile distinguishes among three heritage themes: Cultural Heritage, Natural Heritage, and Cultural/Natural Heritage. The Heritage Strategy then links those themes to management objectives, stewardship activity, and opportunities for community participation.7

In 2023, the National Capital Commission (NCC) renamed the former Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway as Kichi Zībī Mīkan through an Algonquin naming and engagement exercise. A road name serves as civic instruction. The sign marks a language choice, presents historical content, and records an institutional decision to redefine public space through consultation. The renaming process integrated language, consultation, and public signage into the river’s public account, showing how naming can serve as commemoration and governance.8

Film and Public River Knowledge

National Film Board of Canada (NFB) films provide a public record of how institutions have framed the Ottawa River across time. Ottawa on the River (1941) presents the capital corridor through the language of travel and civic spectacle, while River with a Problem (1961) turns to municipal and industrial waste as a matter of public concern. These films show art as a public service by directing attention to river history, public infrastructure, and environmental responsibility. In public media, film can furnish a vocabulary of governance and preserve changing forms of public attention over time.9

Image 2: View of Parliament Hill and Chaudière Falls. “City of Ottawa, Canada West” (ca. 1859), Stent and Laver, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The image brings Parliament Hill, Chaudière Falls, and the Ottawa River corridor into a single frame. It places government, water, and infrastructure within the same visual field, showing how heritage materials condense jurisdiction, public works, and environmental transformation at once. A strong heritage summary should preserve that layered view through clear naming practices and stewardship themes that remain visible in the public record.10 Heritage materials often carry multiple values in a single image. The photograph brings labour, river infrastructure, and government into one frame. A strong heritage summary should preserve that layered view through clear naming practices and stewardship themes that remain visible in the public record.11 These examples point toward three practical ways of strengthening heritage communication.

Three Practical Takeaways

The CHRS Scope page provides a clear model through the statement placed at the top of the page. Profiles, plaques, and story maps should repeat that scope in order to show readers which institution holds responsibility for which part of the heritage record. 12

Second, heritage communication could give greater attention to naming practices and the public processes that support them. The NCC decision to use the Algonquin name Kichi Zībī Mīkan belongs within the interpretive record of the river and deserves fuller treatment in heritage river communications.

Third, heritage programs maintain long-term records of authorship and review. The Ottawa River Heritage Strategy provides a citable record of the committee’s work, the selected heritage themes, and the management objectives attached to designation. The nomination materials also show that the designation process included public consultations, review by the CHRS Technical Planning Committee, and tabling before the Canadian Heritage Rivers Board. The same record identifies executive members, administrative support, and named partners, showing that the strategy emerged through a multi-party process. Future heritage communication should state when revisions will occur, who will review them, and how those revisions will enter the public record. That clarity also reveals what heritage designation leaves unresolved. A shared river continues to move through multiple jurisdictions. Recognition, naming, and responsibility remain unevenly distributed across the institutions that describe it.13

  1. Parks Canada Agency, “Ottawa River Designated a Canadian Heritage River,” July 28, 2016. ↩︎
  2. Canadian Heritage Rivers System, “Ottawa River”. ↩︎
  3. John W. Bessai, “The Aporetic Condition in Canadian Public Policy: Cultural Resurgence and Ecological Transition,” Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies 99 (2025): 93–103; John W. Bessai, Art as a Public Service: The National Film Board of Canada’s Role in Shaping Democratic Dialogues and Societal Transformation (PhD diss., Trent University, 2024); Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999); Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, eds., Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015); Nick Couldry, Media Rituals: A Critical Approach (London: Routledge, 2003). ↩︎
  4. Canadian Heritage Rivers System, “Ottawa River” . ↩︎
  5. Ottawa River Heritage Designation Committee, “ORHDC News,” Heritage Strategy for the Ottawa River, Ontario (2009). ↩︎
  6. Parks Canada Agency, “Ottawa River Designated a Canadian Heritage River,” July 28, 2016 ; Canadian Heritage Rivers System, “Ottawa River” . ↩︎
  7. Canadian Heritage Rivers System, “Ottawa River” ; Ottawa River Heritage Designation Committee, “ORHDC News,” Heritage Strategy for the Ottawa River, Ontario (2009), . ↩︎
  8. National Capital Commission, “Renaming Process: Kichi Zībī Mīkan” ; National Capital Commission, “A Return to the Source: Kichi Zībī Mīkan,” June 22, 2023. ↩︎
  9. National Film Board of Canada, Ottawa on the River (1941); National Film Board of Canada, River with a Problem. ↩︎
  10. Stent and Laver, View of Parliament Hill and Chaudière Falls. “City of Ottawa, Canada West” (ca. 1859), Wikimedia Commons, public domain in Canada.  ↩︎
  11. Canadian Heritage Rivers System, “Designation Process” ; The Canadian Heritage Rivers System Charter, sec. VI, “Scope of this Charter” . ↩︎
  12. The Canadian Heritage Rivers System Charter, sec. VI, “Scope of this Charter” ; Parks Canada Agency, “Ottawa River Designated a Canadian Heritage River,” July 28, 2016. ↩︎
  13. Canadian Heritage Rivers System, “Designation Process” ; Ottawa River Heritage Designation Committee, “ORHDC News,” Heritage Strategy for the Ottawa River, Ontario (2009). ↩︎

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John W. Bessai

John W. Bessai, PhD, is an independent Canadian scholar, filmmaker, and educator whose work examines how public institutions use film, digital storytelling, and interactive media as forms of art as a public service. His research introduces the concept of the Canadian aporetic condition, a framework for understanding the tensions that shape Canadian public life around Indigenous–settler relations, environmental governance, and pluralist democracy. Building on his dissertation at Trent University, he analyzes the National Film Board of Canada’s documentary and digital projects as laboratories for public storytelling, institutional critique, and democratic engagement. He has taught Canadian politics, global issues, environmental policy, and media-focused history courses at Okanagan College, University College of the North, and other institutions. As a filmmaker and producer, he has contributed to documentary series and museum projects that bring questions of ecology, memory, and justice to broader publics. Further details on his research and media work appear at www.johnbessai.com

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