Board the Blue Goose on a pristine morning and glide the ten kilometre Tay Canal. Your host and captain, Frank, is charming in the ways that only great story tellers can be, and you listen. You hear his telling of the last the last duel in Canada, the building of the first Tay canal to join the Rideau at Bevridges Lock, of the old locks and by ways, and of the wildlife in the 135 acre Tay Marsh. He tells you that the water you are plying was once known as “Haggart’s Ditch in recognition of John G. Haggart MP minister of Railways and Canals. You hear that it was Haggart who was responsible for upgrading the first canal with its five locks and a drop of sixty feet to the Rideau Waterway, and you learn that Haggart had this done between 1882 to 1891. It was also Haggart, who, as leader of the House of Commons in 1892, following the death of Sir John A. MacDonald, had previously used Government money to extend the canal connect to his profitable flour mill.
The stories heard, and the sites seen of juvenile grebes, great blue herons, kingfishers, Pickerel Rush, Purple Loose Strife, and Water Lilies will stay with you for a long time. Never, you know, will you ever forget that day on the Tay.
Looking up the Tay
Pickerel Rush
Last Duel Park
Along the way
"The first Tay Canal opened in 1834, only two years after the government-led (and well-funded) Rideau Canal system. It consisted of five rubble locks and adjoining dams, located between its origin at Port Elmsley and the Town. Three of the locks were close together near the beginning, and the fourth several miles upstream. Despite its less-than-optimum quality, it did open up transportation and markets for the area. Eventually, however, canal fees not being adequate to maintain it, the canal structures began to deteriorate, and for a period it served only log rafts. In the 1860s, a movement began to re-build it, with government funding. This time the lower portion of the canal was re-routed to Beveridge Bay, by-passing the traditional entry to the Tay system at Port Elmsley, and requiring only one set of locks.
(The sources of this history are ‘History of the Tay Canal’, by Susan Code, and ‘The First Tay Canal’, by H. R. Morgan. The source of picture: Perth Museum)” http://www.tayriver.
The site of the first rubble lock in the first Tay canal
Juvenile Grebe
White Waterlily left foreround. Purple loosestrife in back
Ring-billed Gull
Great Blue Heron
Cattails
Upper Bevridges Lock
Captain Frank and Will
