Sunday started out rainy with a forecast for thunderstorms.  As we were preparing to leave, a British-Canadian couple came up to us and noted that they had the same boat as we did.  After chatting a bit, it turned out that they the same electronics/processer problems as we do as well.  He suggested cleaning some terminal leads – that solved his problem – so we may look into that for lack of any other solution.

Continuing down the Rideau Canal on a rainy, overcast morning, we were nearly alone on the river winding its way though the fields and marshes.  When the Rideau Canal was built, by necessity they had to dam up and flood areas to create lakes that hadn’t existed before, since the stone underneath was often too difficult to cut through.  Although we appeared to be on wide lakes, the channel is very narrow and wanders erratically along the ghostly path of the old Rideau riverbed 10 to 15 feet below.

We had to lock up 5 locks today – Kilmarnock Lock (Lock 24, up 2 feet), Edmunds Lock (Lock 25, up 9 feet), Old Slys Locks (Locks 26 & 27, up 16 feet) and finally Smiths Falls Lock 29A (combines three older locks 28, 29 and 30, up 26 feet).  Once at the top of the Smiths Falls lock, we found out that the Victoria Park Marina was full but the lock tender volunteered that we could park on the backside of the lock jetty, which we did with help from some of the lock tenders and ended up in probably the best spot in the basin.

Smiths Falls is the “Heart of the Rideau Canal” – because it is the administrative seat of the Rideau Canal system and was an important hub of trading activity in the 19thcentury as the mid-point between Ottawa and Kingston on Lake Ontario.  The town is not as uniform and tidy as Merrickville but has a charm of its own – an eclectic mix of what seemed to be signs of economic decline (multiple dollar stores, tattoo parlors and smoke shops) and hipster presence (locavore restaurants and natural holistic food stores), as well as the historic waterfront with a number of interesting museums, including the Rideau Canal Museum housed in an old restored mill, in which we spent an hour or so).  

One thing we have encountered over an over again in the historical summaries in museums and other sites is the Canadian wariness of its southern neighbor. A lot of the fortifications and the Rideau Canal itself were built to defend British North America from continued threats of invasion by the US -- Yes, the United States did try to conquer Canada militarily at one point.   A lot of the towns we have visited in Upper Canada (Ontario) were built by Loyalists who fled the US after the Revolutionary War.  This might explain the evident patriotism of Canada (flags!) we have seen in nearly everywhere not only as pride of country but also about values and historical perspectives different from its southern neighbor.