Rideau Canal - Intro
The start of a series on the Rideau Canal - its history, ecology, and wildlife.
EPISODE NOTES
TRANSCRIPT
The world famous Rideau Canal… is only here because we were really nervous about our neighbours getting uppity.
The war of 1812 showed how important it was for the Royal Navy to have have safe access to the interior of Canada in case we had to kick America’s ass again. So, over five years, a monumental construction project connected 202km of waterways between the Ottawa river and the naval shipyards in Kingston. And to get ships up and down the 83 meter elevation change took 47 locks in 24 lockstations.
The 19km of man-made canals were largely dug out and constructed by hand, and the project took the lives of almost a thousand mostly Irish labourers - though maybe not how you’d expect. It wasn’t actually the construction itself, but the wildlife. Specifically the nightmarish swarms of mosquitos they were working in, and the malaria they carried that swept through the workers like wildfire.
But after five years of what must have been absolute hell, The Rideau Canal was completed in 1832 and has been running ever since, making it the oldest continually operated canal system in North America. These days the canal is a UNESCO world heritage site used much more recreationally than militarily. The locks are impeccably maintained and most are still hand-operated to let boats through. A lockstation attendant told us her busiest day was 32 boats, at (coincidentally) 32 hand-cranks for each side of the gate. She said she didn’t even want to know what that worked out to - but it’s 2048 cranks in one day. Parks Canada estimates that every year, the locks get a million visitors and more than 50,000 boats pass through them.
We recently canoed a stretch of the canal from Smith’s Falls to Big Rideau Lake. And the next few videos are going to track that trip through some of the local wildlife and ecological questions around the canal itself. So be sure to follow along as we explore the Rideau Canal from American eels to Zebra mussels.