‘It was like the water cooler’: Massive boulder unearthed during COVID gets informative sign

Old Ottawa South residents are celebrating new signage that shares the story of an ancient boulder unearthed during city work in their neighbourhood during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This boulder has a lot to tell us,” said Bellwood Avenue resident Gauri Sreenivasan at an unveiling ceremony held last week at Windsor Park.

“It was a really important to have a sign so that it could be a point of both public education, but also kind of public engagement.”

The sign explains how the massive erratic — now known colloquially as the “Bellwood Boulder” — was deposited in the area by the movement of glaciers some 10,000 years ago.

It remained buried beneath Bellwood Avenue until April 2021, when crews uncovered it while replacing water pipes.

A pandemic-era gathering spot

Sreenivasan said that she and other Bellwood Avenue residents, stuck at home amidst the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, took to the giant rock after it sat for weeks on the dug-up road.

“It was like the water cooler. We would chat around it,” she said. “People climbed it even though it was filthy. And that’s kind of the story of how we we found it.”

“Everybody sort of really adopted it during the pandemic. And it was a good place to be, a happy place to be,” added fellow Bellwood Avenue resident Lindsay Lambert.

When the city considered crushing the boulder into smaller pieces so that it could more easily be removed, Sreenivasan and others pushed to save it — not just to preserve a piece of natural history, but because it helped forge neighbourhood bonds.

“It tells the story of during COVID, how people were feeling isolated,” Sreenivasan said.

“The boulder was a … safe public gathering place and a point that brought people together.”

‘The power of community’

After residents pressed their local city councillor, the boulder was lifted by crane onto a truck and taken to its new home in Windsor Park.

“I always wanted a boulder!” said Lindsay Suthren, who was at the sign unveiling Friday. “We lived on on Bellwood and for 24 years, moved away, and lo and behold, they found a boulder under the grass in our front lawn.”

Sreenivasan hopes that people who stop and read the sign also take away how much power people can have when they rally behind a cause.

“Because the community asked for it and mobilized it, this rock was not destroyed. It was saved for posterity,” she said.

“And so there’s an important lesson … in the sign about the power of community.”