The Rideau Canal made UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites a couple years ago. However, I was only familiar with it insofar as there are some locks on the canal in Ottawa and the canal that runs through the center of the city gets used for skating when it freezes over in winter. On this trip I learned the Rideau Canal is something much larger, a system of locks, lakes, and canals that runs well over 100 miles from Ottawa to Kingston that was built by the British in the 1820s and 1830s, the great era of canal building in North America. The primary purpose was to provide a strategic alternative military route to the Saint Lawrence River, the border with the United States, from Montreal to Lake Ontario in the aftermath of the War of 1812 should hostilities arise again.

They never did, and the Rideau Canal was never used for military purposes.  Once railroads and highways replaced canals, the Rideau even lost its commercial value. Nowadays its locks are operated by Parks Canada and used primarily by small pleasure craft. Altogether there are 49 locks on the canal between Ottawa and Kingston, although several locks are located together at places of significant changes in elevation.  Much of the distance of the canal system is in natural and damned lakes and rivers.

There are several historical towns along the route of the canal as well. The one I stopped in was Perth, one with some Scottish settlement history as well as canal lore. Perth’s namesake is the city in Scotland I stopped in on my visit there in 2015. Ontario and English-speaking Canada generally experienced an especially large immigration from Scotland, so there are many towns in Canada named after places in Scotland.  The other similarity is the architecture. In Scotland I was struck by the solidity of the towns and the extensive use of stone in the buildings. Towns in Ontario like Perth have a similar solid look about them compared to greater use of brick and wood across the border in the United States. The houses here are especially safe if the Big Bad Wolf comes to town. It makes me wonder how such stone constructed buildings would hold up in tornados.