It’s early fall on a shallow stretch of the Rideau River in Ottawa, a few hundred metres below Hog’s Back Falls. That’s the point where the Rideau Canal splits off from the once-natural waterway it has commandeered as a boat channel for almost 200 years, and where the liberated river finally reasserts its wildness.

In this remnant feral section of the Rideau, which runs past Carleton University, hundreds of Canada geese — showing an untamed spirit, like the stream that has drawn them here — are massing in a honking, splashing, fluttering maelstrom of exuberance.

They arrive on this mid-October day every few minutes in gaggles of five, eight, 12. There’s a sense of urgency, it seems, as they descend rapidly from the sky, some of them “whiffling” — performing a mid-air body twist that send

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