Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada
THESE TWO LOCATIONS CONTINUE TO BECKON NATURE ENTHUSIASTS
June/July, 2008 issue
The rust coloured matted hairs on the underleaf which identify this plant protect the Labrador tea from moisture loss in the drying winds of the Hudson Bay Lowlands. While Algonquin Provincial Park is not a permafrost peat plateau, the site here in the park is, however, a spruce bog. The clusters of delicate white flowers were beginning to thin, their creamy-white colours, accented by a backdrop of slender black spruces. A white-winged crossbill perched for all to see on a dead horizontal black spruce limb, its liquid warble drawing our attention to its presence.
Algonquin is full of such surprises and a variety of things to see. On this day, twinflowers, bunchberries and fringed polygalas were centre stage. Delicately displaying its rose-purple petals along many of the trails we walked that day, this tiny denizen of Algonquin is often mistaken for an orchid. They are interesting little plants with an amazing story connected with their reproduction. On the outside of each seed is a transparent appendage filled with an oily liquid that ants find particularly appealing. These “baited” seeds are cut out of the ripe fruits of the plant, and are then carried by the ants back to their nests. After the ants have consumed the oily appendages, the undamaged seeds are discarded into a nearby refuse dump utilized by the ants, which act as nutrient rich seed beds for new colonies of fringed polygala plants.
Along the Spruce Bog Boardwalk, we found tufts of cotton grass growing in the bogs, small puffs of cotton balls waving back and forth in the gentle breeze that found its way into the open areas of this predominantly treed area. While masquerading as a grass, the plant is actually a species of sedge and there are more than 100 sedge species in Algonquin, compared to only 80 species of grass. We tend to overlook most of them as their handicap in the human popularity contest is the obvious lack of flowers. They are pollinated by wind, and have no need to flaunt dazzling colours to attract insects. And if you are not going to be pollinated by insects, why bother to waste energy to put out colourful flowers to attract them?
The Big Pines Trail is one of the more recent trails to be added to the park’s roster of 15 or so walking trails. A cooperative venture of The Friends of Algonquin and the Algonquin Forest Authority, the trail is a tribute to the memory of the giant white pine. There are about 75 giant white pines along this trail, many of them far in excess of 200 years in age. They tower over 100 feet in height, the lower half straight and true, smooth and branchless until well above the canopy of their deciduous neighbours.
These trees were missed by the loggers in the 1800s, likely far too small back then to attract their attention. But how did these huge pines get here in the first place? A “church door” on one pine we came across was evidence that Algonquin had been the scene of occasional forest fires, this one likely occurring sometime around 1928 or so. But fire played a role too in these white pines being here. Fires burned off the dead leaves on the forest floor, subsequently exposing the mineral soil needed for the white pine seeds to geminate. With any amount of luck, these same fires destroyed some of the overhead trees, allowing light to penetrate to the new seedlings. And if the seeds were dropped right after the fire, and before other competing vegetation got a head start, these pines were on their way to becoming the giants that are present today. It is believed that all the pines on this trail germinated the same year, suggesting a forest fire and the right set of circumstances in 1790.
The Big Pines Trail is for the hiker who likes to hike, then stop and contemplate history, and what it might have been like in the logging days of earlier years. There is a decaying white pine log part way along the trail dating back to 1890. Sliced at each end by a cross cut saw, the log, now serving as a food bank for numerous tree seedlings, tells the story of a log that had a defect, and was left behind. Farther on, the foundations of an ancient sawlog camp, now covered in forest growth, tell the story of when the teamsters and the swampers and, of course, the cutters, lived here for the entire winter.
Algonquin Park has many such stories to be told, and it was my pleasure that day to guide a busload of outdoor enthusiasts along some of the trails. There are so many hiking trails, each with a different theme. The logging museum, of course is legendary at Algonquin. The 10-minute video is a must, and as the last slide of the camboose appears on the screen, the screen ascends like a garage door, and the recreated camboose marking the start of the logging museum self guided trail is suddenly there before you.
We plan to do other bus tours to this exciting park. Passengers spoke enthusiastically about a repeat trip, and a fall colour tour of the park with a hike, and a winter trip. All are special seasons, and each season is highlighted by a tour of the famous Visitor Centre and lunch as part of the package. If you are interested in such a trip, give me a call sometime. The bus we use from Foleys Bus Lines in Madoc is washroom equipped and also features video monitors allowing us to show you videos on Algonquin or some other nature related presentation
This summer, on the Rideau Canal, boaters may notice a little more excitement than usual. It was in 1826 when Lieutenant Colonel John By was sent from England to supervise the construction of what was to become one of the greatest engineering feats of the 19th century. Conceived in the wake of the War of 1812, the new route from Ottawa to Kingston was to be a war time supply route. However, today, it sees pleasure boaters – in fact, thousands of them every year, as they work their way along the chain of lakes and interconnecting man-made channels that make up this system.
I have the pleasure of being included among the many activities planned this year as I lead a total of five kayak trips through the summer and fall, along one stretch of the system, from Jones Falls, north for 18 km to Newboro. And a week ago Saturday, I completed the first of those five paddles. The trips are being organized by Frontenac Outfitters, located north of Sydenham, and is part of a series of similar trips they offer each year to places of interest, including the Thousand Islands.
On our maiden voyage a week ago Sunday, I took our group of kayakers on a walking tour around the Jones Falls locks and pointed out the Kenney Hotel that has been in the same family now for five generations. Circling around past the Visitor Centre, Sweeney House and the blacksmith shop, it was the famous stone arch dam that attracted the most interest. This massive structure at one time was considered the largest dam in North America, standing 60 feet in height and more than 350 feet in length, involving 260 workers and 40 stone masons who toiled day and night to finish this dam. It was considered an engineering feat unparalleled in its day and even today still retains a perfect geometrical arch, its walls so smooth as though the dam were just completed yesterday. Were it not for the trees that have grown up at its base, it would still be possible to demonstrate why it was nicknamed “the whispering dam.” Its parabolic shape is so flawless, that it is possible to stand at one end and talk in a normal voice, and be clearly heard by a person standing 360 feet away at the dam’s far end.
It is these attractions that make the Rideau Canal so special to boaters. For us, it was the day long paddle through numerous small lakes, walls of granite rock often towering high above beside us. Bird life has become accustomed to boat traffic here, and great blue herons casually stalk fish along the rock edges, paying little attention to passing boats. Loons can often be approached, their conversational tremolos echoing off the granite rocks as one paddles along. After encountering so many ospreys in the Quinte area nesting on platforms, hydro poles and steel towers, it came as a bit of a surprise to actually see a pair nesting in a high pine tree as we paddled along.
Wood thrushes and ovenbirds serenaded us we paddled along forested areas, and at one point I was relentlessly dive-bombed by a herring gull when I inadvertently passed too close to two chicks that I had earlier passed off as pieces of floating litter. The two chicks bobbed like little corks as I glided by them.
There is much to see along this section of the Rideau, and unlike the larger boats that are restricted to following the marked channel, canoeists and kayakers have the option of taking short cuts through shallow, narrow passages, or conversely, adding variety to the trip by following the well marked charts that we have attached to the cowlings of our boats, and exploring new areas.
There are only two locks along this stretch, and one of them, the Davis Lock, is a short portage. The option is offered of paying for the added excitement of actually “locking through” with the big boats, an option a group of us gladly accepted when we did the entire Rideau Canal system in 2003, involving some 45 locks. One of the two locks we pass is Chaffeys, and it is here where we enjoyed lunch across from the historic Chaffeys Lock Grist Mill, built in 1872, now a summer residence.
However, it is at our final destination, Newboro, where we have a chance to see another lock which is an example of an ill-conceived effort at “modernization” by the Department of Transport, before the system was taken over by Parks Canada and declared a Heritage site in order to preserve the past. Here the Newboro Lock is electrically operated, and except for two others at Smith’s Falls and Black Rapids near Ottawa that were similarly modernized in the early 1970s, the entire lock system has managed to retain its original flavour, of being opened and closed manually using hand winches known as crabs.
In 1970, an editorial in one local paper summed up this effort at modernization by stating, “It is unfortunate that the Rideau Canal appears doomed to be altered in character for the sake of ‘efficiency’ and ‘progress.’ The argument that there is a need to speed up the passing of boats through the Rideau Canal locks may appeal to some boaters, but they are in a minority. Anybody who is in a hurry, should not be going up or down the Rideau.”