Rideau Canal

At some stage during or around the War of Independence, the British were worried about an American blockade of the Ottowa River, which would have serious ramifications for British movement of stuff (troops? Food? Things to sell?), so they got in this engineer called Colonel John By, and in 6 years, he built them this fabulous amazing 200km long system of locks/rivers/lakes between Ottowa and Kingston. While he was at it, he laid out the plans for ‘Bytown’, the town that grew up out of all the workers etc while the canal was being built, which later got changed to Ottowa, and later chosen as the capital of Canada by Queen Victoria, when she was young and happy. For some reason it is now called the Rideau Canal. In winter, they ice skate on it, unfortunately, we are here just as the skating season ended, so we missed out on that. In summer, you can boat on it, and there are walks up and down the length of it.

Looking across the river to the Museum of Canadian History

We walked across the river because there is a really good view of the back of Parliament (for the record, I thought it was a big church…). The down side of the bridge – it is wooden boards, with knotholes where you can just see down down down, and it shakes, whenever a bus goes past. Also, it is not particularly warm right now (there was a huge mass of ice still sitting in the river).