Rideau Canal - How The Rideau Got Its Name(S)
As we say goodbye to the Rideau Canal (for now), we finally find out where that name came from - and another, much older one.
EPISODE NOTES
TRANSCRIPT
The time has come to say goodbye to the Rideau Canal, at least for now. And it occurred to me in all the time we’ve spent here, we’ve never talked about how it got that name.
We can find the answer right here - on either side of Green Island in Ottawa where two waterfalls plunge nine meters into the Ottawa river.
They’re a big reason the canal has to be built in the first place: they prevent boats moving between the Ottawa and Rideau rivers.
And that leads to eight locks being built a couple kilometers south, raising the boats 24m into the canal. And it leads to something else pretty significant.
The workers building those eight locks need places to live. Their houses on the south bank become known as Bytown. And it grows, and spreads, until in 1855 it officially becomes a city called Ottawa.
So in a way these falls were the origin of Canada’s capitol and the Rideau Canal. And they’re also where the latter got its modern name.
In 1613, Samuel de Champlain sails by them on his way up the Ottawa River. He describes them as
“...a marvelous fall... it descends a height of twenty or twenty-five fathoms with such impetuosity that it makes an arch nearly four hundred paces broad."
But he also thinks they look like a curtain of water. Or, in French, un rideau.
So that’s the name they’ve had for more than four hundred years. But they’ve had another one, for more than four thousand. To the Algonquin, they’ve always been Pasabikedjiwan, and the Rideau river was Pasāpikahigani Zībī, meaning “the river of rocky formations,” or Pasapkedjiwanong, “the river that runs between the rocks.”
They got around the falls by portage. Archaeologists have found loading and unloading sites for birchbark canoes here, less than 2km away, that date back at least four thousand seven hundred years. They would carry boats and supplies up a trail to a launch point on the Rideau River.
But everything changes in the 1820s with the construction of the canal. At the time, Constant Pinesi is the grand chief of the Algonquin. He fought in the war of 1812. His sons had died fighting for the British.
But now, settlers are swarming his nation’s lands along the waterway, driven again by the construction of the Rideau Canal. Chief Pinesi and the Algonquin can’t stop the tide and are forced to give up their river.
Fortunately, the story doesn’t end there. Nearly 200 years later, Chief Wendy Jocko - a direct descendent of Chief Pinesi - along with the Algonquin of the Pikwakanagan First Nation, are working to bring oversight back, through a sweeping land claim in eastern Ontario.
Among other provisions, it demands much more stringent environmental standards
“to consider the Algonquin interest of protecting Mother Earth and the water.”
That certainly goes for the Rideau - as you’ve seen through this series, the canal brought a lot of trouble to the ecology of the river, in the form of pollution, invasive species, and habitat loss and alteration.
So this is a big step in the right direction. Not just the acknowledgment of unceded lands and greater cooperation with First Nations, but the emphasis on addressing these ecological issues with them.
I’ve been taking the canal in chunks, by canoe. This trip was a tiny, almost arbitrary little slice. But every one of those few days was full of discovery. There’s no better way to appreciate how vital this place is and how important it is to preserve it, than exploring it for yourself - if you can, I’d recommend by paddle rather than motor.
And I’ll be back next week with the start of a new series, 3000km away from the Rideau. Hope to see you there.