Few canals in the world were built with such a mixture of fear and optimism. After the War of 1812, the British worried that the St. Lawrence, which formed the frontier with the United States, could be cut off in a new war, and so they decided to build an inland route from the Ottawa River to Lake Ontario at Kingston. Lieutenant-Colonel John By of the Royal Engineers was given the job, and between 1826 and 1832 thousands of labourers, many of them Irish, dug and blasted and built, working in swamp and forest and losing many to malaria. The result was 202 kilometres of linked rivers, lakes and cuts, with 45 locks, and it is the oldest continuously operated canal system in North America.
It never saw a shot fired. Instead, it became a quiet route for steamboats and, later, for pleasure craft, and it still runs on the same principle: the locks are worked by hand, by crews who turn the big wooden and iron gates with long levers, just as in the nineteenth century. UNESCO added it to the World Heritage list in 2007. At this point you are in the rural middle of the system, the quiet country between Ottawa and Smiths Falls, where the canal threads through farmland, woods, marshes and small lakes, with blockhouses and stone lock stations at intervals.
The nature here is gentle. Herons stand in the shallows, turtles bask on logs and loons call on the larger lakes. In spring the banks are full of trilliums and birdsong, and in autumn the maples give a blaze of colour. The water is still and dark, and a few minutes beside a lock, watching a boat rise slowly with the gates open, is worth more than any monument.
The riding is a pleasure of the peaceful kind. The roads alongside the canal, many of them designated Heritage roads, run along the water through villages like Merrickville, with its fortified blockhouse and its handsome stone buildings, and Perth, a little further west. Surfaces are generally good, with gentle curves, farm traffic and the odd frost heave. Smiths Falls, with about nine thousand people, has fuel, shops and cafes, and is the best place to fill up. Late May and September are ideal, and deer and wild turkeys cross the roads at dusk.