Constance Bay residents hope for the best, but prepare for worst as river rises

Dave Fitzsimons, 73, was loading up sandbags in Constance Bay on Friday morning and was back there again on Saturday. Photo by JULIE OLIVER /Postmedia

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Dave Fitzsimons got up with the sun Saturday and headed to his local community centre in Constance Bay to get another 30 sandbags.

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“I just came in from placing them on the beach to protect our retaining wall,” he said.

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Fitzsimons and other Constance Bay residents living along the shore of the Ottawa River have been going back and forth, sometimes more than once a day, to get those sandbags because, with water levels rising in recent days, they’re bracing once again for potential flooding.

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“We’re going at a precautionary pace, but we’re hoping for the best and starting to prepare for the worst,” Fitzsimons told the Ottawa Citizen.

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The Constance and Buckham’s Bay Community Centre is providing sandbags to streamline the process as water levels continue to rise. Fitzsimons said the peak was expected to come to his area Sunday around midnight.

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He said he had 296 filled sandbags with more to come.

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Despite the anxiety, though, he said filling the sandbags had became something of a social activity bringing people together.

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Geoff Thompson, a longtime friend of Fitzsimons and also a resident of the area, said his own house was in the City of Ottawa’s designated flood zone, but the property was on higher ground, making him and his family safer.

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“You gotta come up four stairs to get into the side door of the house,” Thompson said. “The worst we’ve ever had was 2019, and I had 18 inches of water in the crawl space, and it would have had to come up another three feet to be in the main floor of my house.”

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Thompson, who has been living in his house since 1998, said repeat flooding in Constance Bay started relatively recently.

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“We had no flooding since 2017,” Thompson said. “There are many theories as to what’s going on right now and why we keep running into this.”

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Dave Fitzsimons says he placed 1,800 sandbags along the shoreline and the retaining wall of his Constance Bay home in 2025. In 2019, that number was 3,000. Photo by JULIE OLIVER /Postmedia

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Despite the camaraderie associated with sandbag filling, Fitzsimons says area residents worry about how the next few days will play out.

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The retired fire captain and his wife, Paula, haven’t had their house flooded despite owning the property since 2003, but there have been a few close calls.

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In 2025, by the time the flood warning ended, he had brought 1,800 bags along the shoreline and the retaining wall. In 2019, that number was 3,000.

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That year the Fitzsimons discovered a crack in the foundation of their house. It was not large, only oneo-quarter of an inch, he said, but, living by the river meant they could not risk ignoring it.

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“Things can accelerate quite quickly,” he said. “Our next greatest fear (this year) after the peak is the wind.”

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Fitzsimons said the wind could create waves on the river up to 16 inches high, increasing the water level by the same amount.

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Fitzsimons said the house he and Paula live in was built in 2003 to meet a 100-year-flood requirement. They moved into the house more permanently after retirement in 2010.