Hemlock Road: Wateridge was promised a connection. Where is it?
Disclosure: I am a candidate for Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe) in the October 2026 municipal election. The facts below come from public documents, linked at the end.
Wateridge Village residents have been asking the same question for years: why is there still no road link from Hemlock to the rest of the neighbourhood?
This was never a surprise feature. City transportation work for the Rockcliffe lands said a future Hemlock Road connection, north of the Aviation and Montreal intersection, would provide an additional road access to the community. People bought homes on that understanding. A resident petition says as much: many bought having been told that this road would eventually be re-opened.
What the record shows
- The road is tied to a stormwater pond. The Wateridge Village Community Association reported in its 2024 newsletter that the reconnection is coupled with stormwater work for the western sector, including a new pond beside the future connection.
- Digging the pond raised well-water concerns. The work means excavating rock, and extra engineering was needed to protect drinking-water wells used by neighbours in Fairhaven.
- The timeline has already slipped. In 2024, Canada Lands Company hoped, pending approvals, to start construction in 2025 and open the road around 2026. It is now October 2026 and I can find no confirmed opening date.
- The file bounced between CLC and the City. By 2025, CLC described a lot of back and forth with the City over the pond's configuration and exact location.
- The landowner has changed. Canada Lands Company has been integrated into Build Canada Homes, which says it will carry forward the remaining phases of Wateridge.
The questions that matter
Residents do not need another explanation that the road is "coming." They need dates and names. I am asking:
- When were the pond and road applications submitted, and what did the City's comments say at each round?
- Which approvals are still outstanding, and who is responsible for each?
- What is the committed construction start and opening date now that Build Canada Homes holds the file?
- What did the ward councillor's office do, and when, to push this file forward?
Years of "pending approvals" is not a plan. Residents gave this project their time and their trust, and they are owed a date.
What I would do
I would put the Hemlock timeline on the public record, with milestones, owners and dates, and report progress to residents regularly instead of waiting to be asked. If the City is the bottleneck, residents should hear that plainly. If the delay sits with the developer, the City should use every lever it has.
I have not found evidence in the public record that assigns the delay to one party, and I will not claim otherwise. The point is that a connection planned for years is still not open, and the public has not been given a clear explanation or a firm date. That is a failure of accountability whoever is ultimately responsible. but consider this! The incumbent King has attended many a buffet during the last seven years of his incumbency....still no link.
I'd make it a priority!
- Wateridge Village Community Association, Winter 2024 Newsletter
- Wateridge Village Community Association, Winter 2025 Newsletter
- Change.org, Residents for opening Hemlock Rd
- City of Ottawa, Wateridge Phase 1B Transportation Impact Assessment (2019)
- Wateridge Village, Build Canada Homes integration notice
a documented duty, plus a refusal or silence you can point to. These five steps follow from that.
1. **Get the documents that could create a duty.** Request the Wateridge subdivision agreement, the draft-plan conditions, the servicing agreement, and any Community Design Plan policy on Hemlock. The City request would go through MFIPPA. CLC is a federal Crown corporation, so its request goes through the Access to Information Act. You're looking for any signed condition or milestone that actually requires the western reconnection. Without one, you have a delay case rather than an injunction case.
2. **Put your questions to the City and CLC in writing, with a response date.** Use the questions from items 1 to 5: when the package was deemed a complete engineering submission, how many comment letters exist, whether an ECA has been filed, and whether anyone requested a scoped early-servicing package. Address CLC's current director (your post notes Taylor Marquis is now listed) as well as Jarvis. Mandamus needs a demand and a refusal, so a dated letter creates the record either way: an answer, a refusal, or silence.
3. **Get the engineering memo on which Hemlock stations are independent of the pond.** Your items 1 and 5 both depend on it. If the carriageway, sidewalks, and dry utilities don't change with pond geometry, the early-servicing argument holds. If they do, it fails. Ask the City and CLC for that determination, or find an engineer willing to assess it from the public drawings.
4. **Build the winter incident log.** Ask OC Transpo for delayed, short-turned, or cancelled Route 17 and 25 trips on the Wateridge approaches in winter 2024-25 and 2025-26. Ask Ottawa Fire and Paramedic Service what the second apparatus access is if the south grade is impassable. A court will want dates and incident numbers. This also covers the harm side, since a judge will ask why a political timetable isn't enough.
5. **Take the winnable ask to council and the City.** Seek a motion or direction for a fixed decision date with written reasons. It should also require City and MECP review to run concurrently and require the independent Hemlock works to be separated from the pond. Ask for the Fairhaven well baseline survey and the monitoring and remedy conditions at the same time, so the well issue is addressed rather than ignored. As your post says, this is the realistic route: a court is more likely to order a decision on a timetable than to order construction.
Steps 1 and 2 come first because their results decide whether you go to court or keep up the administrative pressure.
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