Locks, docks & narrows
By Erin Anderssen with photography by David Barbour
A young family tests its homemade boat and sense of adventure along the Rideau Canal
THE AVALON WAS BORN IN OUR OTTAWA GARAGE,
hammered together by my husband Joel and his father with
fallen oaks and cedars from the ice storm that hit Central and
Eastern Canada in 1998. Its design, a V-bottom launch, was a
favourite among East Coast rum-runners in the late 1800s,
though our own 18-foot replica has spent most of its days performing
humbler duties, such as ferrying groceries from town
to the summer cottage we rent on Nova Scotia’s south shore.
It motors at about 12 knots flat out, which is like riding
a bicycle alongside a car when we’re up against a day cruiser.
But what it lacks in speed, it makes up for in style, with the
graceful curve of its unpainted hull. Perched on its bench seats,
I feel as if I’m in another era.
What better boat, then, to retrace a historic route.
For years, Joel had wanted to make a trip along the Rideau
Canal, the 202-kilometre waterway between Ottawa and
Kingston, Ont., looking for close-to-home adventures to test the
Avalon’s seaworthiness. So last July, a few weeks after the canal
was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, we decided the time
was finally right.
You can travel the entire system of lakes, rivers and locks in
about five days, if you hurry. But even on a quiet day, a boater
arriving at the wrong time at the eight-lock chambers of the
Ottawa Lock Station, the canal’s northern terminus on the Ottawa River, right beside Parliament Hill, might wait half a day
just to be lifted through. There are picnic tables and lawns
large enough to kick around a soccer ball at most of the locks and
even museums to tour during the wait, but with six-year-old
Noah and two-year-old Samson aboard an open boat and rain
in the forecast, we thought it best to start where traffic would
be light and the trip shorter.
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