History Abounds In This Community

HISTORY ABOUNDS IN THIS COMMUNITY 

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 (Napanee Beaver)

Friday, August 24, 2007 (Picton Gazette)

When September 15^th rolls around, I will have been to Jones Falls no fewer than 11 times this year. This community off Highway 15, north of Kingston, may be small, but sees hundreds of people a day, because it lies along a major waterway, the Rideau Canal. I visit often for no reason other than that it’s there.

However, I am mainly there this year to lead a series of interpretive kayak tours, from Jones Falls, 18 km north to the village of Newboro. By September 15^th, I am quite certain staff at Frontenac Outfitters who are hosting the tours, will be able to blindfold me, and just shove me into the water, and I will find my way to Newboro through the numerous channels and series of five lakes and two locks just fine! The tours I have done so far have been filled to capacity, and it is no wonder, for this is the Rideau Canal’s 175^th anniversary. The popular waterway is absolutely humming this summer with pleasure boats and various events.

Part of my job on these tours is to interpret the history of this historic waterway, and explain the locking system to those who join us. I have paddled the entire system from Kingston to Ottawa, on two occasions, and with the possible exception of Merrickville whose historic buildings embraced me to the point where I had to be dragged away, Jones Falls has got to be my favourite location along the entire 202 km route. While summer with its flotilla of pleasure boats passing through, accented by a backdrop of rugged landscape has inspired many an artist and photographer, it is autumn when the area becomes emblazoned with some of the richest colours I have ever seen. So much so, I intend to organize a fall colour bus tour to Jones Falls in a couple of years.

The Rideau Canal was completed in 1832, an incredible six years after it was begun. Colonel By and his workers – thousands of Irish immigrants and French Canadian labourers – hand dug over 18 km of navigable channels to connect existing bodies of water, to form a complete route from Ottawa to Kingston. The canal was conceived in the wake of the War of 1812 as a secure war time supply route for troops and supplies from Montreal to reach the settlements of Upper Canada and the strategic naval dockyard at Kingston. It was considered one of the greatest engineering feats of its time.

There are 26 lockstations, incorporating a total of 47 locks. Jones Falls has four such locks, considered to be the most complex on the entire system, lifting boats an incredible 62 feet, before they continue their journey northward, overcoming the natural rise in water level between Cranberry Marsh and Sand Lake. There is much to see here at Jones Falls from a restored defensible lockmaster’s house to a blacksmith shop which continues to turn out forged items, not to facilitate repairs, but rather, in producing novelty items for tourists.

Perhaps the greatest feat at Jones Falls was the dam, considered in its day to be the tallest such structure in North America. A similar dam had been constructed at Hogg’s Back, near Ottawa, but collapsed three times due to instability. Workers learned from their mistakes, and they determined that this dam at Joes Falls would be a success. But its construction did not come without a price. Many died during its construction, and one person on his death bed allegedly murmured these final words, “I die with a smile on my lips, not because of the hope of Heaven, but because the tortures of Hell will be more pleasant than the work at the Jones Falls Dam.” Whether or not he actually said these words is uncertain, as the community for many years was known as Long Falls, and was renamed Jones Falls, after property and mill owner Charles Jones. Still present today is the Long Bridge, no longer serving as a road, but as a foot bridge to the famous Hotel Kenny that has been in the same family for five generations.

But it is the Stone Arch Dam that visitors make a point to see. This engineering marvel is over 350 feet in length and 60 feet in height. Built as an arch, it is said, were it not for the trees that now grow against the dam, its parabolic effect will allow a person at one end to speak in a normal voice, and be heard by a second person at the other end of the structure. At its base, the dam is some 30 feet in width, reinforced by an underwater mud slope extending 127 feet upstream to reduce pressure on the dam. All of this, done by hand and it still functions today to maintain water levels in Sand Lake, just as the hand winches called “crabs” still open and close the lock gates as they did when the canal was first opened in 1832.

Nearby is the community of California, an early settlement so-named because it was the dream of early settlers to join the “Rush of ‘49” and find gold. The California School, Union Church and the cheese factory, are but memories, converted long ago to private homes.