Plan After the
War of 1812, information was received about the United States' plans to invade the
British colony of
Upper Canada from upstate
New York by following the
St. Lawrence River. This would have severed the lifeline between
Montreal and a major naval base at Kingston. To protect against such an attack in the future, the British began the construction or reinforcement of a number of defences including
Citadel Hill in
Halifax,
La Citadelle in
Quebec City, and
Fort Henry in Kingston. To ensure safe passage for military vessels between Montreal and Kingston, a route was planned that would proceed westward from Montreal, up the
Ottawa River to the mouth of the Rideau River, later the site of
Bytown (now
Ottawa), then southwest via a series of short canals connecting natural water bodies (rivers and lakes) to Kingston which is located on Lake Ontario. The Rideau would form the last portion of this route, along with shorter canals at
Grenville,
Chute-à-Blondeau and
Carillon to bypass rapids and other hazards along the route. The first survey for a canal route was done in 1816 by
Sir Joshua Jebb. Jebb, then a young 22 year-old
Royal Engineer, surveyed the main route by way of the Rideau Lakes and also a shortcut route from the mouth of Irish Creek on the Rideau River to Morton Bay where it would return to the main Rideau Route. At the time of Jebb's survey, a water connection to Kingston had been established due to flooding created by mill dams located at White Fish Falls (today's Morton) and the Round Tail (just north of Upper Brewers), which flooded a previously non navigable area, the Cranberry floodplain. Jebb's shortcut proposal became known as the Irish Creek Route and it was the route Jebb recommended in his report. When Lt. Colonel
John By was brought out of retirement in 1826 to be the Superintending Engineer for the Rideau Canal project he had both Lt. Joshua Jebb's 1816 survey and Samuel Clowes' 1823-24 surveys and canal proposals. With Jebb's Irish Creek shortcut route discounted by Clowes, Colonel By only considered the Rideau lakes route. by
Thomas Burrowes Construction The construction of the canal was supervised by Lieutenant-Colonel
John By of the
Royal Engineers. Private contractors such as future sugar refining entrepreneur
John Redpath,
Thomas McKay,
Robert Drummond, Thomas Phillips, Andrew White and others were responsible for much of the construction, and the majority of the actual work was done by thousands of
Irish,
Scottish, and
French-Canadian labourers. Colonel John By decided to create a slackwater canal system using dams to raise the water level to sink rapids instead of constructing new channels around them. This was a better approach as it required fewer workers, was more cost effective, and would have been easier to build. The canal work started in the fall of 1826, and it was completed by the spring of 1832. The first full steamboat transit of the canal was made by Robert Drummond's steamboat,
Rideau (aka "Pumper"), leaving Kingston on May 22, 1832, with Colonel By and family on board, and arriving in Bytown on May 29, 1832. The final cost of the canal's construction was
£822,804 when all the costs, including land acquisition, were accounted for (January 1834). Because of the unexpected cost overruns, John By was recalled to
London and was retired; he received no accolades or recognition for his tremendous accomplishment. – October 1906
Commercial use Since the canal was completed, no further military engagements have taken place between Canada and the United States. Although the Rideau was not put to defensive use, it played a pivotal role in the early development of Canada and encouraged shipping, trade, and settlement of Upper Canada by tens of thousands of immigrants. The canal was easier to navigate than the St. Lawrence River because of significant rapids in the river between Montreal and Kingston. As a result, the Rideau Canal became a busy commercial artery between Montreal and the
Great Lakes. It was also used by tens of thousands of immigrants from the British Isles heading westward into Upper Canada in this period. It was a major route for shipping heavy goods (timber, minerals, grain) from Canada's hinterland east to Montreal. The canal had to compete with the
Erie Canal through New York State. Some of the shipments that might have been made from Kingston east, instead were taken to the opposite side of the St. Lawrence River to
Oswego, New York. There they traveled by the
Oswego Canal to reach the Erie and, via the
Hudson River, New York City markets. Businessmen in Kingston studied the issue. They considered building another canal to
Lake Simcoe and on to the French River and
Georgian Bay, thereby enabling traffic on the upper Great Lakes to use canals all the way to Montreal and avoid shipping through the entire lakes system. This plan eventually emerged as the
Trent-Severn Waterway. It had originally been surveyed as a military route but never built. A simpler plan was to route around the dangerous parts of the St. Lawrence to allow direct shipping from Kingston to Montreal, and this was soon underway. But commercial use of the Rideau largely ended after the
Prescott and Bytown Railway was opened in December 1854. It provided faster service than shipping by the canal. Further work improving the direct route continued along the St. Lawrence River. In the 1950s it was developed as the current
Saint Lawrence Seaway, which allowed ocean-going ships access to the Great Lakes.
Current use After the arrival of railway routes into Ottawa, most use of the canal was for pleasure craft. The introduction of the
outboard motor led to an increase in small pleasure craft and increasing use of inland waterways like the Rideau and Trent-Severn. Today the Rideau forms part of the
Great Loop, a major waterway route connecting a large area of the eastern United States and Canada.
Construction deaths As many as one thousand of the workers died during the construction of the canal. Most deaths were from disease, principally complications from
malaria (
P. vivax), which was endemic in Ontario within the range of the
Anopheles mosquito, and other diseases of the day. Accidents were fairly rare for a project of this size; in 1827 there were seven accidental deaths recorded. Some of the dead remain unidentified as they had no known relatives in Upper Canada. Memorials have been erected along the canal route, most recently the
Celtic Cross memorials in Ottawa, Kingston and Chaffeys Lock. The first memorial on the Rideau Canal acknowledging deaths among the labour force was erected in 1993 by the Kingston and District Labour Council and the Ontario Heritage Foundation at
Kingston Mills. Three canal era cemeteries are open to the public today: Chaffey's Cemetery and Memory Wall at Chaffey's Lock—this cemetery was used from 1825 to the late 19th century; the Royal Sappers and Miners Cemetery (originally called the Military and Civilian Cemetery and then as the Old Presbyterian Cemetery) near Newboro—used from 1828 to the 1940s; and McGuigan Cemetery near Merrickville—used from the early 19th century (c. 1805) to the late 1890s.
Recognition The Rideau Canal was designated a
National Historic Site in 1925, and marked with a federal plaque the next year, and again in 1962 and 2013. The canal has been featured on postage stamps issued by
Canada Post. Two 45-cent stamps—'Rideau Canal, Summer Boating at Jones Falls' and 'Rideau Canal, Winter Skating by Parliament'—were issued on June 17, 1998, as part of the Canals and Recreational Destinations series. The stamps were designed by Carey George and Dean Martin, based on paintings by Vincent McIndoe. In 2014, the canal appeared on a $2.50 international rate stamp as part of a Canada Post set honoring World Heritage Sites. The same design was reprised on a 2016 domestic-rate stamp. In 1993,
British Waterways and Parks Canada agreed to
twin the canal with the
Caledonian Canal in
Scotland. In 2000 the Rideau Waterway was designated a
Canadian Heritage River in recognition of its outstanding historical and recreational values. Smiths Falls, and Rideau Lakes. == Waterway ==