![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783097649_810_default.jpg\")
Emergency responders treat Craig Waddell after his tractor was struck by a semi-trailer on the morning of June 23. (Submitted by the Waddell family)<\/p>\nChris Waddell\u2019s grandfather used to drive cows down what\u2019s now Mitch Owens Road in Ottawa when it was nothing more than a gravel farm route.<\/p>\n
If he saw anyone along the way, they were his neighbours, ready to lend a hand to get the cows to pasture.<\/p>\n
“It’s changed so much now that it’s not even safe to drive a tractor on the road,” Waddell said.<\/p>\n
That point was driven home on June 23, when a short routine trip down Mitch Owens Road almost cost Waddell his life. <\/p>\n
He started that day the same way he does every one. <\/p>\n
“Rolled out of bed, got my barn clothes on, jumped in the tractor, drove down the lane here as I do every morning to head over to our dairy farm to milk the cows,” he said. <\/p>\n
His farm is less than a kilometre away from his family\u2019s Ivandale Farm. He started up the tractor at about 4:30 a.m., dragging a discbine used for cutting hay. He turned on the lights and took a left onto Mitch Owens. <\/p>\n
“I made it just over halfway and I could see the transport coming behind me,” he said. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s nothing unusual. Truck traffic has gotten heavier in recent years. But this time, Waddell realized all of a sudden, the transport wasn\u2019t pulling over to pass \u2014 and it wasn\u2019t slowing down.<\/p>\n
He braced for impact \u2014 and then felt it. The crash was so loud that the surveillance camera back at his farm picked up the sound, hundreds of metres away. <\/p>\n
His tractor slid sideways across the road. He felt his back spasming. He had a large gash across the top of his head. But when he was able to get out the back window and walk, he saw the scale of the damage. <\/p>\n
His discbine was a ball of scrap, and the impact had knocked the axle off his tractor. <\/p>\n
The transport driver was standing there, he recalls, seemingly unharmed. Waddell said he didn\u2019t see any skid marks, or any sign the transport had tried to stop.<\/p>\n
Ottawa police confirmed that the driver of the truck, a man in his 30s, was charged with careless driving under the Highway Traffic Act in connection with the incident. <\/p>\n
Emergency responders treat Craig Waddell after his tractor was struck by a semi-trailer on the morning of June 23. (Submitted by the Waddell family)<\/p>\n
Waddell said the collision should be a wake-up call about the pressures facing rural roads in Ottawa \u2014 and the need for drivers to do a better job sharing the road safely with farmers.<\/p>\n
“It feels like our rural road has been hijacked as a highway,” he said.<\/p>\n
Close calls almost every day<\/p>\n
His family, which has been farming along Mitch Owens Road for six generations, has seen more and more examples of dangerous driving. <\/p>\n
“It’s almost every day that when we go on the road, we have a close call,” Waddell said. <\/p>\n
Often, it\u2019s drivers in a hurry looking to pass slow-moving farm equipment, like the transport driver who tried to get ahead of Waddell\u2019s father and just missed a head-on collision. That happened the day before his crash, he said. <\/p>\n
His father caught another risky pass on his tractor\u2019s dash cam, as he was bringing a newborn calf back to the dairy farm. <\/p>\n
“The van didn’t want to have the patience to wait and went to go overtake my father, and there was an oncoming vehicle,” he said. <\/p>\n
The van just managed to swerve back in time as the oncoming vehicle moved to the shoulder. The van missed a cyclist who was traveling on the right shoulder.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783097650_788_default.jpg\")
Craig Waddell with Periwinkle, the cow his father was transporting when overtaken by a passing vehicle. (Mathieu Deroy\/CBC)<\/p>\n
The speed limit on that stretch of Mitch Owens Road is 80 km\/h, but Waddell says he often sees drivers going 100 km\/h and sometimes much more.<\/p>\n
“It’s exhausting the amount of close calls we had,” he said. “We knew at some point something was going to happen.” <\/p>\n
Councillor calls for patience<\/p>\n
Osgoode Coun. Isabelle Skalski said she hears about a lot of examples of speeding and unsafe passing on Mitch Owens Road, but she added that it\u2019s hardly unique to one corridor.<\/p>\n
“I think we’re seeing it across all the rural roads, to be honest,” she said. “There’s a lot of new traffic and people are feeling it and they’re seeing the sharing of the roads with trucks and they are noticing the volume increases across all of rural Ottawa.”<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783097650_424_default.jpg\")
Osgoode Coun. Isabelle Skalski poses for a photo at Ottawa City Hall on June 18, 2025. (Francis Ferland\/CBC)<\/p>\n
Skalski said she also hears concerns about the lack of signalized intersections on the road, making for dangerous left turns. She said the city is doing a full corridor assessment of every intersection along Mitch Owens Road and is working on a signal for the crossing with Boundary Road.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day, that’s where I hear the biggest issues and I think we need to focus in on those sorts of traffic control measures,” she said. <\/p>\n
But she said driver attitudes also have to change to be more respectful of farm equipment.<\/p>\n
“Obviously farm vehicles move slower and people need to be more patient, need to give them space,” she said.<\/p>\n
“The reality is that people are rushing and not driving safely on these roads and sharing the roads the way they should be.”<\/p>\n
Search for solutions<\/p>\n
Waddell said he\u2019s seen more and more traffic since the Amazon warehouse opened at Boundary Road near the 417, just past the eastern end of Mitch Owens.<\/p>\n
Mitch Owens is currently a full-load truck route. It heads straight to Bridge Street, a key crossing over the Rideau River in Manotick, where residents have pushed the city to redraw the truck route network to spare the village so much traffic.<\/a><\/p>\n The city has launched a south end truck route study that could lead to potential changes, but Waddell is hesitant to see the problem simply moved to another road to trouble other farmers.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783097651_806_default.jpg\")
Craig Waddell’s tractor after the collision. (Waddell family)<\/p>\n