My original plan on Rideau Canal was just to see its famous locks at Ottawa’s city center but turned out I saw many parts of the canal from Ottawa to Kingston unexpectedly. The famous and iconic Ottawa’s part of the canal was just hard to miss, while I did not find anything interesting with those multi-locks and a bit quite surprised that the size of the canal was smaller than I imagined, the location and the view of Canadian Parliament with this World Heritage Site was just superb. After great time in Ottawa, my friend and I planned to depart the city to Toronto in the morning but with certain reason, we ultimately left Ottawa on the late lunch time and decided that we had to find some place to stay instead of Toronto, and Kingston was my friend’s choice.

On the way to Kingston, one of us needed Tim Hortons, so we stopped at the small town of Kemptville to have small coffee break and filled the gas. Unknowingly that my friend accidentally adjusted google map to avoid highway while he tried to find nearest gas station, we drove into smaller picturesque road to Merrickville-Wolford. The area was lovely with beautiful houses, gardens and farms that remind me New England, one of my friends even mentioned that this area was similar to his neighborhood in Boston. When we reached Merrickville-Wolford, the sign of Merrickville Ruins sparked our curiosity, so we decided to see the ruins which also caused us to visit Rideau Canal, Locks 23 and 22. Again I just admired the beautiful surroundings of Rideau River, and the locks were just a bonus. Anyway, we started to notice that something wrong with the google map, so finally we could go to Kingston directly via Brockville. We had Kingston’s famous pizza as dinner and went to Confederation Park to relax and while I sat leisurely next to the marina, I saw a sign about World Heritage Site that informed me that the uninspiring strange tower in the marina was the Shoal Tower, and the tower on the different side of lake was Fort Frederik, all parts of listed Rideau Canal! Moreover, next morning we also drove pass Murney Tower, another listed component, on the way to eat famous local ice cream at Reid’s Dairy.

Apart from the serene landscape with lovely small towns around the locks and the stunning view at Ottawa, the canal itself, in my opinion, was too much river-liked more than a man-made canal. The Kingston part was a system of fortifications which may be interesting on the paper but what I saw was nothing exceptional. For engineering significance, the Ottawa locks maybe the only place that really show the merit for casual visitor, the nearby St. Lawrence Seaway in Montreal is far more impressive and interesting. Maybe my ideal image of UNESCO listed canal was like Canal du Midi or Canal du Centre in Europe, so seeing actual river transformed to transporting canal with series of locks was not enough to distinguish its outstanding universal value.