How often have you dreamt about going back in time? If you have and enjoy the river and boats, and wondered what it all looked like “from the river,” before the St. Lawrence was flooded and dammed, you are in luck, as former sailor Alan Rafuse’s 54 stanza poem “The Canaler (A Trip.) takes you on that journey.
Start your voyage, at Galop’s Canal Road west of Cardinal, to Locks 27 and 28, with Alan as your guide.
Alan wrote:
The southernmost lock at Cardinal
Was the gate to downstream currents.
Once you left the lock you were on your own,
Facing back, you’d be faced with deterrents.
The pilots on these canalers
Were a breed of a kind, I’d say
They knew every ripple of water,
Whether it be night or day.
Return to Cardinal and turn right towards the river, crossing the original canal, to Legion Park,turn east to Legion Way.
Alan skims by Iroquois, going downstream.
The ‘Rapide de Plat’ near Morrisburg
Could be exciting in ‘low water’ years.
From ‘upper plateau’ to ‘lower plateau’
Was like a landing strip in tiers.
A waterfront plaque is all that visibly remains of the canal in Morrisburg.
Re-entering the canal at the “Landing”
This was a stretch, a mile give or take,
And when you come to the broadening,
You were traversing “Bergin Lake.
Take the Long Sault Parkway to Macdonell Island to the plaque that marks lock 21, now underthe very swift current.
Bergin Lake was created in 1902 as the headpond for the Mille Roches powerhouse. Now under the St. Lawrence,south of Lakeview Heights.This photograph depicts the remains of Sheek Island, once the home of family farms, Ault Park and a 3,500 year old Indigenous village under study when it was flooded.
Nothing above ground remains of the Canal until Cornwall; to fill the void visit the bookstore at the Lost Villages Museum housed on remade Ault Park; here you can purchase Ginette Guy Mayer’s book,Views from the Pilot House,which includes Alan’s words.
Moulinette was in passing,
And then the “Frying Pan.’ (an island)
Three blasts on the whistle about the point,
And the ‘swing bridge’ would open span.
Mille Roches and its busy paper mill
Were seen along the way
The schoolhouse and cheese factory,
You could still smell the curds and whey.
Lock Twenty was at Maple Grove
Nineteen, near Blackadder’s Creek.
Around the bend, the Howard Smith mill,
The Roosevelt Bridge, its black peak.
Lock Eighteen was a busy spot
Locate south of the mill,
With its coal and sulphur and pulpwood docks,
Creating very huge hills.
Locks Seventeen and Fifteen were quite big steps,
By-passing the cotton mills, north-east and south-west.
Leaving Fifteen, were are no on the lake ,
Part of the St. Lawrence, Coteau Landing, next break.
RETURNING WEST
A pretty good fight to the current at Iroquois
The pilot would cuss, if the fireman passed.
But once in the lock, he would swig at his rum,
‘Cause the next lock was Cardinal, and the job was done.
Part II will follow Alan along the Soulange and Lachine Canals to Montreal.
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