Darcy Baker stands on a dock in Jordan Harbour, ready to unlock the door to a secret world.

The key is a paddle.

Most highway drivers only know the wide outlet to Twenty Mile Creek as a sparkly flash of blue along the fast-moving Queen Elizabeth Way. Between Lake Ontario and Ball’s Falls Conservation Area, motorists can only sneak two more good peaks at the unique waterway, at bridge crossings for 21st St. and Regional Road 81.

They don’t know what they’re missing, said Baker, the land management director at the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority.

“Some of the most beautiful spots in Niagara are on this creek,” said Baker, who took The Standard on a canoe tour in advance of Sunday’s official opening of a new Jordan Harbour Conservation Area.

“There is unique wildlife, trees you’ll rarely see anywhere else in the peninsula. But a lot of these things you’ll only see from the water.”

That’s not so easy to do. The kilometre-wide harbour is shallow, which means motorized craft are rare visitors. And with most of the land along the lower creek in private hands, it’s tough to find a legal spot to put your canoe or kayak in the water.

That’s where the new conservation area comes in, Baker said.

The authority wants to make the bare three-acre patch of waterfront land into a gateway to Twenty Mile Creek for the paddling public. It’ll start Sunday by hosting a Father’s Day grand opening for the property on 21st St., renting out canoes and kayaks to visitors and hosting harbour tours with the help of the Niagara Dragon Boat Club.

The property’s boating history was briefly scuppered in the 1990s when the province expropriated the former Campbells Marina to expand the QEW. Today, the Niagara Rowing School keeps a shed and some boats on the property, but the old marina building burned down in afire last fall.

The blaze melted the conservation authority’s original plan to turn the old marina into a canoe and kayak rental facility, part of a $3.5-million strategy to connect the creek and harbour to Lake Ontario’s waterfront trail with boats, trails and boardwalks.

Fundraising for a new building is underway, Baker said, but the agency decided to open the property for public, non-motorized boat access now.

A new dock added late last week now serves as an on-ramp to a watery highway into nature — and although it is away from the real highway, QEW noise is one of the first things you notice upon arrival at new conservation area.

As our canoe glided away from the rowing club’s floating dock, Baker had to speak up to be heard over the roar of a passing transport truck.

The rumble of commerce is an interesting reminder of the creek’s past. In the 1800s, Twenty Mile Creek was a well-used ship route that shuttled flour and other goods from pioneering industrial hamlets like Glen Elgin, now the site of Ball’s Falls conservation area.

Now the waterway is the “one of the largest uninterrupted natural corridors left in Niagara between the escarpment and the lake,” said Baker, looking at a swath of densely-treed shoreline. “If you think about it, only two roads cross the valley between here and Ball’s Falls. Otherwise, it’s a large, natural valley system that is largely protected. The only other place you’ll see that (locally) is in the Niagara Gorge.”

As we paddled along the west side of the harbour, Baker pointed to steep banks that have largely discouraged farming and development, making it possible for Carolinian forest remnants and locally-rare species like the pignut hickory tree to survive. The unique geology, flora and fauna along the creek has convinced the province to protect large sections of the Twenty Valley as Areas of Natural and Scientific Interest.

It’s pretty interesting for non-scientists, too, said John Wolfenberg, a member of the Niagara Peninsula Paddler’s association.

“It’s a great place to go for a paddle, especially for novices, because the water is always so calm,” said Wolfenberg, whose group organizes at least a couple of Twenty Mile Creek trips each year — if they can get to it.

Wolfenberg said by phone he’s excited about the new conservation area because the only other public access point for paddlers along the creek is Bailey’s Bridge at 21st St. In dry weather, however, “the water level there is down to nothing,” he said.

A reliable, legal launching spot “should draw a lot of people out,” he said. “It’s worth a visit…. You can see blue herons and all sort of other wildlife in the marshes.”

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