On the heels of May Day there is a little known “Rite of Summer”. It happens on the Rideau Waterway. Few observe this rite: the “Lifting of the Logs” but the frog and I were there.
In the fall, at the locks all along the waterway, sodden stop-logs are dropped into gouged slots in sandstone wing walls. In the dark time, they keep the ice from jamming the lock gates. Having protected the gates through winter they are lifted with little ceremony and floated to the shore once more, converted to rafts.
In the summer people swim off the rafts little knowing their winter purpose.
It is important to keep these squared timbers water-laden. In the fall when they are returned to guard post, their watered weight is essential: logs in place, one on top of the other, they are submerged to form the winter wall. Sometimes they are topped with a concrete slab that lessens movement through the darkened ice-bound time.
In May a scow may lift them. Sometimes it is a vehicle with a winch. No matter really, for once tied into a raft it is always the scow that floats them to their summer place.
The “Lifting of the Logs” is done now for summer and the frog and I move on to coming summer days.
Apple Trees at the lock on the “Lifting of the Logs"
Newboro Block house “Lifting of the Logs May 11 2015
Getting ready for the lift
testing the gates
Lock Master Bill Bruss
Lockman Eric Jones
lifting the winch
first log is lifting
moving to raft position
Second log lifting
Water in the gap
Water rising to fill the gap between the logs and the gates
almost there
submerged logs “pop “ up as the weight is lifted from them
Making the raft
The frog didn’t move as the logs rose!
log shifting from place and the frog is unperturbed
Bull frogs shall not be bullied
last log lifted
The rite is over. Moving on to summer
