Friday, June 13, 2014

The By Wash

The three day drencher has stopped, and my daughter asked me to go to our ancestral home: Chaffey’s Lock. Now living in Edmonton, she wanted to see The By Wash at Chaffey’s after the sodden days' inundation.

A By Wash is a conduit beside a lock that is used to control water levels. Stop logs are in place and, when the levels are high, the logs are removed. Seldom are five removed at one time, admitting charging water  to  levels below, and this, is what she wanted to see.  

For those of you who do not know about the Rideau, following is a thumbnail sketch:

The Rideau Canal, opened in 1832, is the oldest continuously operated canal system in North America. The word rideau is French for curtain. This was the appearance of the twin falls of the Rideau River, where it meets the Ottawa River, to Samuel de Champlain who travelled up the Ottawa River in 1613. The name Rivière du Rideau first appeared on maps in about 1694.

Initial construction of the Rideau Canal started with preparing the area for the Ottawa locks in the fall of 1826. Major construction on the rest of the route started in 1827. By November 1831 construction had essentially been completed with 47 masonry locks and 52 dams creating a 202 km (125 mile) waterway, one of the greatest engineering feats of the 19th century. 




 Some stop logs  still in place





And now to my gardens. The sun is out.
Love to all