Ottawa Outdoor Gear Library - OOGL

We are currently in the thick of our seasonal gear change over! That means Winter gear is being swapped for the Spring/Summer/Fall gear you know and love.

We’ve decided to close down to help us get organized, but we’ll be back open for loans starting May 5th (ps. we’ll probably still be organizing at that point, but don’t want to keep you waiting any longer). See you then!

In 2024, OOGL was awarded a grant from the Public Health Agency of Canada (). The “Healthy Canadians and Communities” fund allowed us to conduct a research project focused on evaluating OOGL’s impact on communities in the National Capital Region and the outdoor health behaviours of our members. It also allowed us to hire a full-time staff member to lead the project — Tianna (they/them)!

After two fantastic years, marked by significant growth for OOGL, this project has officially come to an end. Thanks to the funding from PHAC, we’ve been able to offer and support several community programs, engage more deeply with our partners and users, and ultimately strengthen the case for the value and importance of our work through evidence-based research.

The conclusion of this project also means we’re saying goodbye to our staff member, Tianna. Tianna has been an enthusiastic and creative addition to our team at OOGL, leading initiatives such as: Fat Hikers’ Club, BIPOC Intro to Paddle Boarding (w/ ), BIPOC Intro to Tennis (w/ + ), revamping our website, and the emergency fundraising campaign to rehome our organization. Tianna is deeply committed to outdoor accessibility and fun — we will miss them terribly!

Stay tuned for the public release of our impact evaluation report! Our sincerest thank you to PHAC (), Tianna, and our community that made this project possible. 💚

It’s been a few weeks since our Learn to Cross-Country Ski program wrapped, so we wanted to take a moment to share some of the wonderful smiles of our course participants. Here you can see some of our students taking part in the Rideau Winter Trail’s annual Loppet on February 22nd, putting their newly learned skills to use!

This program was so much fun, not just for participants, but for OOGL staff and RWT volunteer instructors. Thank you to all of our course participants who brought such amazing energy week after week. We know this course was in high demand, so we really hope we can offer it again next year (so stay tuned)!

This program would not have been made possible without the extensive support of our volunteer instructors at the , and funding support from the Canadian Parks & Recreation Association’s () Reaching Each & Every One grant.

If you see yourself, let us know in the comments :)