40 Years – It’s Our Anniversary!
OWL is celebrating its 40th full year on the Ottawa River! To commemorate this wonderful occasion, we want to bring back some of the people and stories that helped shape our beloved riverside home.
Our Story
40 Years on the Ottawa River
We are family owned and operated, beginning with our founders Hermann and Christa Kerckhoff in 1981. They immigrated to Canada in the late 50’s and fell into a lifelong love with the river. Hermann and their daughter Claudia were the first kayakers to descend the Ottawa River, discovering a prime location for rafting. Today, the company is thriving thanks to the current owners Claudia and Dirk Van Wijk. The third generation are quickly becoming more involved as well, with Stefani Van Wijk as Director of MKC and Katrina heads up the marketing and design.
Bringing Back the 80’s
Claudia Van Wijk-Kerckhoff, 2nd-Generation Owner
Our 2020 staff uniform t-shirt was drawn up by Claudia as OWL’s first design. She created her first t-shirt at just 15 years old, a hand cut kayak pirouette for the Madawaska Kanu Centre, all squeegeed by hand. With a knack for business at an early age, this became her first venture. In no time, she was selling up to 2000 t-shirts a year with varying designs, and successfully managed to pay her way through all of university. In 1981, the year OWL Rafting opened, Claudia designed the ‘rafting lady’ logo and it has been brought back for our 40th anniversary shirts!
From Raft Guide to Riches (Kind Of)
Dirk Van-Wijk, 2nd Generation Owner
Dirk’s life-long love for whitewater began at an early age. At five he sat in the middle of his parent’s canoe paddling upstream on the Ottawa River rapids, joining historian Eric Morse as they retraced the Voyageur routes. Becoming a canoe tripping guide for Blackfeather Wilderness Adventures was a natural next step. In 1979, Dirk and Claudia met for the first time at the Ontario Slalom Championships on the Gull River, where they were both competing. They immediately hit it off, and Claudia ended up joining him on a canoe trip that fall. Afterwards, Dirk became a part-time MKC instructor and, because of his experience guiding Nahanni River raft trips, he was asked by Claudia’s parents to help start OWL Rafting. He’s accumulated many great stories from over the years, but our staff never lets Dirk forget about his early raft guiding ‘legacy’. At certain water levels, there are 3 main rapids that you do NOT want to flip on; while running extra rafts down the river, Dirk managed to dump the boats in 2 out of 3 of them and was awarded with his very own t-shirt that said, ‘2 out of 3 ain’t bad’!
The Man With the Dream
Hermann Kerckhoff, 1st-Generation Owner
“Running this company has shown me tough competition and taught me courage, as well as to believe in the success of a dream. It was in 1979 that German whitewater kayaking legend, Klaus Lettmann, took a rafting trip on the Ottawa River and said to me upon return, ‘Hermann, you are crazy not to be rafting here. It was so much fun!’ And that’s all it took. I was hooked on the idea and my wife, Christa, encouraged adventurous business drive. Together we worked hard as business partners throughout our entire lives and saw thousands of trips raft our favourite river. Today, I am very proud of my daughter and her husband, experts in the sport of whitewater, who worked just as hard to improve the business. They built the resort from a small ‘ma and pa’ business to an international first-class resort; often rated as the best rafting company on the Ottawa River. Unfortunately, my wife recently fell ill in our retirement and couldn’t add to this quote, but with her last breath she told me how proud she is to be recognized as Co-Pioneer and Inductee in the Whitewater Hall of Fame with me.” -Hermann Kerckhoff
Tribute to a Whitewater Legend
Christa Kerckhoff, 1st-Generation Owner
Post WWII, Christa Ottenberg grew up in Hamburg, Germany with her 6 siblings and aspired to become an accountant. She eventually attained her CA and was sitting in her office when she heard a knock at the door. It was her former boyfriend, Hermann, who had just gotten back from Canada. He told stories of freedom, opportunity, and abundant wild spaces. She loved the idea, and soon after they got married and boarded a ship to Canada. The ‘far-off-land’ became their home. Christa loved living along the water’s edge and her favourite thing to do was jump in whenever she pleased. It was this fun-loving nature combined with her hard work ethic and motherly tendencies that made her such a strong leader. She successfully helped build 2 companies from nothing, balanced financials to survive the ups and downs of a new industry and fostered a passionate work environment. Christa had an extraordinary ability to believe in people and wanted to provide everyone with the opportunity to excel. It wasn’t long before the paddling community became our family, her colleagues became her best friends, and eventually the staff, at both OWL and MKC, were an extension of our family as well. She is greatly loved and missed by many.
