Walk the river from Brewer Park to Greystone Village on any Sunday this August and it feels like a single unbroken corridor. Water on one side, mature trees on the other, the same asphalt underfoot the whole way. Longtime residents talk about it that way too, as one path, one system, one thing that has always been there and always will be.
It isn't one thing. It's two agencies, two funding streams, and at least one stretch of riverbank that nobody has agreed to be responsible for. This is the first summer all of that becomes visible at once, which is why the path feels different depending on exactly where your feet are.
Where the Path Actually Splits
The river corridor that ties Old Ottawa South to Old Ottawa East runs through the jurisdiction of the National Capital Commission along the canal side, then hands off to City of Ottawa infrastructure once you cross into the Old Ottawa East riverfront near Greystone Village. Most people walking or biking it never think about where that handoff happens. There's no sign, no fence, no visible marker. The pavement doesn't change color.
But the people paying for its upkeep do change, and in 2026 both of them are mid-project on their own separate timelines.
The NCC's New Lane Lines on the Canal Side
If you've noticed fresh pavement markings and flexible delineator posts going in along Queen Elizabeth Driveway and Colonel By Drive this summer, that's the National Capital Commission building new uni-directional, summer-season bike lanes designed to pull cyclists off the shared multi-use pathway and onto the roadway itself. Northbound bikes get the QED lane, southbound cyclists use Colonel By. The project runs from Preston Street to Laurier Avenue on one side and Hog's Back Road to Daly Avenue on the other, and it's budgeted at roughly $1.7 million, with construction planned to begin this summer and wrap by spring 2027.
The reasoning behind it is straightforward. Pedal-assist bikes and e-scooters have made the old shared pathway genuinely dangerous in the tighter sections near the canal, and the NCC has been running speed monitoring and a Share the Path safety campaign in the meantime while the physical fix gets built. If you've felt like the path near Old Ottawa South has gotten more crowded and more tense in the last couple of summers, that's not nostalgia talking. The agency responsible for it agrees, and this is their answer.
None of that touches the Old Ottawa East side of the river. Different owner, different budget line, different construction calendar entirely.
Old Ottawa East Is Working a Slower, Separate Clock
Cross into Old Ottawa East and the project underway isn't about bike lanes at all. It's about the dock at Brantwood Park. The City of Ottawa has already approved and funded an accessible asphalt pathway that will connect to the existing dock there, work coordinated with a planned lifecycle renewal of the park's play equipment. Design work is expected to happen this year, with construction scheduled for 2027.
That's a full year behind the NCC's bike lane project on the canal side, and it's being paid for and managed by an entirely different body. The two projects share a river. They don't share a budget, a contractor, or a finish line. If you're wondering why the canal-side path already shows fresh curb work while the Brantwood Park dock still looks untouched, that's the answer. One is under construction. The other is still on the drafting table.
There's a reason the newer dock at Springhurst Park didn't get the same accessibility fix first. Its slope and the underground services running beneath it made improvements there impractical, which is part of why Brantwood, with its more workable terrain, got the green light instead.
The Stretch of Riverbank With No Clear Owner
Here's the part that surprises even people who've lived along this river for years. Not every inch of it has an agency in charge.
Along a roughly 500-metre stretch of riverfront near Greystone Village, the nature trail, the Rideau River Western pathway, and a major city sewer line all run through land that's still owned by Regional Group, the developer behind Greystone Village. The city holds easements for the pathway and the sewer line, but neither the City of Ottawa nor the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority has wanted to take on ownership of the land itself, largely because of the operational costs and liability that would come with it.
In the meantime, volunteers have spent years pulling invasive species out of that stretch by hand. But Regional Group hasn't allowed removal of the larger invasive growth, things like Manitoba maples and buckthorn, even though that growth is now crowding out the native trees the same developer planted when the site was first restored. Regional has floated the idea of divesting the land before. Neither the city nor the conservation authority has taken them up on it.
So if that particular section of trail looks a little wilder, a little less curated than the manicured NCC pathway just a short walk south, there's a structural reason for it. Nobody has fully claimed it yet.
What Ties the Whole Walk Together Anyway
None of this changes what the path is actually good for, which is the same thing it's always been good for. Brewer Park still anchors the south end of the route, sitting on the north bank of the river directly across from Carleton University, and it's still home to the Sunday Ottawa Farmers' Market along Sloan Avenue. It's also still the site of Canada's largest legal graffiti wall, tucked under the Dunbar Bridge, a spot the city legalized back in the early 2000s and that's been repainted by new artists more times than anyone's bothered to count.
A Sunday loop along this corridor still holds up as one of the better ways to spend a slow morning in either neighborhood:
- Start at the Brewer Park market for produce and a coffee, then swing under the Dunbar Bridge to see whatever's currently painted on the wall.
- Walk or bike south into Old Ottawa South's Bank Street corridor. Black Squirrel Books and Espresso Bar is worth the stop on its own, a two-floor used bookstore and cafe that doubles as a venue for live music and open mic nights most weeks.
- If you're timing it for a meal, The Belmont, led by chef Phil Denny, and Table SODAM's Korean small plates are both close by and both worth the wait if it's busy.
- Continue north across the river into Old Ottawa East and Greystone Village, a 26-acre riverside community built around the historic Édifice Deschâtelets, where the streets are laid out so that nearly every one of them leads back down to the water.
- Finish at Brantwood Park, dock included, at least until the accessibility work there gets underway next year.
The route hasn't changed. What's changed is that for the first time in a while, you can actually see who's responsible for which part of it, and who isn't responsible for any of it yet.
That's worth knowing if you live here, if only because it explains why some parts of your regular walk look freshly maintained this year and others look exactly the same as they did five years ago. It's not neglect. It's just two different clocks running on two different sides of the same river.
If you're a longtime resident here, or thinking about what it would mean to buy or sell along this stretch of the river down the line, The Zak Green Team knows this corridor block by block, project by project. Request a personalized market valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
