Celebrating 175 Years

CELEBRATING 175 YEARS

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 (Napanee Beaver)

Friday, June 22, 2007 (Picton Gazette)

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 19^th 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.”