Days of Locks and History

As promised, we had an early start. The engines woke us before six, and we ere on our way. We had a lot of locks to go through to get from Montréal to Upper Canada Village, where we were to spend the night.

First was the St. Lambert Lock. For us, this had significance, because we had lived across the river from it, and many times have crossed the Victoria Bridge which goes over it. So it was wonderful to see it from inside, for once.

Those great doors, pushing back walls of water, and yet the ship rises really quite quickly, once we are set in place. Locks were first developed on the St. Lawrence about 250 years ago. When it opened in 1959, this one in St. Lambert replaced the Lachine Canal.


























These photos are actually of the next locks, at Beauharnois. but the shots are similar to what we saw in the other locks. The yellow things that look like suction cups are just that: for the very large ships, these attach to the sides of the vessel, and then the vessel has no need to tie up—saving them money and time.

There were two locks at Beauharnois, then one at Eisenhower, and one at Iroquois and Snell. A lot of locking today. Part of the problem with this, is that we spent the entire day on the ship. while it is a very pleasant environment, we are in a position of definite caloric surplus.

Having said that, the locks were a wanna-be engineer's dream (and we know that big boys like big toys). And we had a relatively early evening stop, at the Upper Canada Village Marina. Last night, we watched a wonderful magic show given by a man called Chris Pilsworth (www.borntoamaze.com). Totally awesome: Darlene was asked to be part of one of the tricks, and she had no idea how it was done. And, thankfully, we were not going to be woken at six with the engines, since the morning would be spent at the Village.

And so it was. The morning, after breakfast, we took a miniature train from the Marina to the Upper Canada Village, where they had called in staff and kept the place open, mostly for us. We had a wonderful two-hour visit there, and then were back on the ship for our trip through the last (Iroquois) Lock, before stopping for a time in Prescott to visit Fort Wellington, a fort from the Wars of 1812 and the Rebellions of 1848-52. Interesting, but had to be cut short because of a backup of traffic on the Seaway which made us an hour late. (Again, they kept the place open for us—terrific.)

Then back to the boat, supper on board while they moved the boat to Brockville for the night. And here we sit.








The picture is of the final dam which we went through (the Iroquois Dam and Lock) before docking at Prescott.

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Location:Prescott, Ontario