Rideau200 minus 6

Celebration ahead! Event-planning is underway for 2032, the 200th Anniversary of the Rideau Canal’s completion. We jump the gun by six years, paddling the route in 2026, two hundred years since the Canal’s construction began and Bytown (now Ottawa) was founded.

The Rideau Waterway, 202 kilometres from Kingston to Ottawa, is one of our all-time favourite canoe routes; we have paddled it twice, both times in September. Last time (2019) we gave you ten reasons to paddle this historic Canadian waterway. (link) In this post we focus on the joys of an early-season trip.

First hurdle, first turtle

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of swans. Colonel By Lake and River Styx are overwhelmed by swans, some native, some invasive. Most are gathering and dabbling the water; a few are sitting proudly on newly-constructed nests.

Water snakes galore (one four feet long!), huge carp splashing wildly along the shoreline, active beavers, herons courting, and our first turtle of the trip. Animals and plants are awakening as we launch our rented canoe on May 22, one week after the Rideau Canal National Historic Site opens for the 2026 navigation season.

The spring-like burst of activity is the first surprise of this early season (May-June) trip, as our previous trips have been in the Fall. Another first-day surprise is the 40 km/h headwind we face all day from Kingston Mills to Upper Brewers. The wind is manageable, but it’s a workout and a warm-up for things to come.

Very Ontario

Ontario’s cottage country is springing to life, too. Waterfront cottages are being opened, vast lawns mowed and groomed, docks installed, water toys readied. Those lawn mowers, pressure-washers, and leaf-blowers make a lot of noise! We have questions: why are they called cottages, when they look like mansions on sprawling estates? Why such vast areas of lawn? Wouldn’t owners want to escape from lawn maintenance chores? Perhaps it helps with mosquito density.

Locks are bustling with activity, too. Lockmasters and staff are painting picnic tables and lock machinery, installing canoe docks, filling brochure racks with pamphlets to welcome visitors. All they need is some boaters.

Canoe season

Where are all the power boaters? We see a few rental houseboats (with nervous, novice skippers) near Smiths Falls and in Merrickville we meet the Kawartha Voyageur riverboat on its five-day cruise from Ottawa to Kingston, but otherwise the 2026 navigation season is off to a slow start.

The price of boat gas is too high, we are told. They are waiting for the free lockage period is another reason we are given. Free lockage is coming from June 19 to September 7, 2026 through the Canada Strong Pass initiative. The regular fee of $6 per foot for a transit pass (47 locks, one direction) seems modest compared to the total cost of big-boat ownership, but perhaps power boaters are that price-sensitive.

Early season is canoe season, we discover. We encounter four big groups on multi-day trips: two six-canoe Scout groups, one large school group, and a nine canoe/kayak thirteen-person Kingston to Ottawa expedition organized by the Wilderness Canoe Association. We see a few kayak groups, too, but they are mostly day-trippers. Some paddlers go through the locks, while others choose to portage.

With few powerboats on the move, the number of lockages is low. Lockstation grounds are often busy, though, especially in the evenings. Locals come to fish, to walk their dogs, to watch birds, and otherwise enjoy the green space and historic buildings of these Parks Canada National Historic Sites.

Wake up, lily pads

Lily pads are sprouting, sending up their first set of leaves as we paddle through Benson, Mosquito, and Pollywog Lakes, an off-channel scenic paddling route that is one of our favourite sections (see Watson’s Paddling Map 6). The new lily pads get bigger and greener as we progress, and their flowers just begin to open.

Dragonflies emerge, swallows arrive, beavers get busy, and baby turtles appear – a vibrant hub of activity as the water warms up in May.

Little Goose Poop

A song gets stuck in your head when you paddle all day. The Beach Boys Little Deuce Coupe is this trip’s theme song, but we change the title to Little Goose Poop.

Canada geese have taken over several lockstations, Jones Falls and Newboro in particular. Goose parents strut across the manicured lawns and water channels, each set of parents with a string of goslings (we count up to 24 in one string) between them. Are these merged families, or have these Rideau geese achieved an exceptionally high fertility rate?

Goslings or their parents can fall into the locks and require rescue. A little raft is left in the locks overnight, so goslings that fall in can rest until lockstation staff return in the morning to undertake a rescue.

Some lock visitors delight in these little goose families; they ooh and aah and photograph the broods. Others are annoyed by the goose poop; a singe goose can produce one to two pounds of fecal matter daily. Whether you love them or wish they would go away, Canada geese are protected under the Migratory Birds Regulation.

Big Rideau, big wind

The wind blows from the southwest – except when it doesn’t.

Parks Canada recommends Kingston to Ottawa as the best direction to paddle, because “prevailing southwest winds blow in that general direction.” But, as sailors know, prevailing winds do not always prevail, and we are hit with hefty headwinds and high seas in the days we cover the Rideau Lakes region, Big Rideau in particular.

Our introduction is a short ten kilometre paddle from the Narrows to Colonel By Island, a nearly three-hour slog with a headwind of 50 km/h. In fine weather, Colonel By Island is a busy place, as it is one of the few public islands in Big Rideau Lake. In a windstorm, it’s just us and a fellow in a small boat with three cats.

The Island’s buildings (except for the newish washrooms) are crumbling and mouldy, but once were a luxury fishing lodge, then an architect-designed cottage where Paul Anka, David Niven, and other high profile guests were entertained. We wander along the Island’s hiking trail, hoping to wait out the wind, but being ashore doesn’t guarantee safety. Weather notifications ping our phones. A huge tree cracks and falls near our tent when wind gusts reach 90 km/h.

We telephone four marinas, hoping to arrange a water taxi to shuttle us to the north end of Big Rideau, but no such service exists, so we shove off on our own into the wind. Our lives are never in danger (says Cathy, the stronger swimmer), but it’s a twenty-kilometre, six-hour battle against wind and waves to Upper Beveridges lock. Seeing our exhaustion, the lockmaster helps us unload and lift the canoe out of the water. Doug’s forearms are a bit sore after six hours of constant j-stroke, but twelve hours of sleep puts us right and ready to go.

The Spring choir

The wetlands and marshes are the noisiest of the Rideau’s natural environments. Bullfrogs provide the bass notes, songbirds sing the soprano and alto lines, with percussive accents by the slap of a beaver tail or the violent splash of a carp. The muskrat (our first sighting) is silent; it looks like a small beaver or a large, fat squirrel.

The redwing blackbird, common on the tops of cattails, we easily recognize. A birding local suggests Doug should try the Merlin app to identify the bird songs. Various varioles, warblers, sparrows, waxwings, and Baltimore Oriole are now on his Life List. Perhaps birding will become a new hobby?

Sleeping rough

We sleep on the ground in our Marmot Fortress tent most nights on this three-week cruise. What better way to experience a lockstation’s nighttime noises: the call of the loon, the chirp of crickets, the crack of thunder, the drumming of a downpour on the tent roof, the booming, boring music of a wedding after-party at a country house across the street, the honk of a nosy Canada goose in the your ear at 5:00 am.

To try something different, we make two accommodation upgrades: (1) oTENTiks at Upper Brewers and Upper Beveridges locks and (2) a Rustic Cabin at Rideau River Provincial Park. oTENTiks are prospector-style A-frame canvas tents with bunk-style beds on a raised floor, two deck chairs, and a barbecue. The Rustic Cabin is more luxurious, with a screened porch, power and lights, an electric kettle, a squeaky bed (which Doug disassembles and attempts to fix), and our own outhouse just steps away.

These upgrades are interesting to investigate, and they do save some time setting up and breaking camp, but for us we decide they are not good value. Next time we will leave them for young families, first-time campers, or those with more disposable income.  

Bridges old and new

The Canal’s 47 locks and 24 lockstations command the most attention, but there are several historic swing bridges that are part of the lock system.

Canoes can easily pass under all the bridges, although we find it’s a tight squeeze under the Brass Point Bridge. The official clearance is 3.9’/1.2 m, but Cathy needs to crouch in the bow, and Doug executes a back bend to clear this bridge at this early season higher water level. Originally built in 1887, this long wooden swing bridge is about to undergo a full replacement.

Burritts Rapids Swing Bridge is the oldest of its kind on the canal. A hand-turned swing bridge, counterweights, roller wheels, unique truss design: civil engineers will love this one.

Smiths Falls is oh-so-proud of its new timber, steel, and stone pedestrian bridge, recently installed over a bypass section of the Rideau Canal. The bridge was designed and built by a British Columbia firm with Canadian materials. We just missed the ribbon-cutting, which took place May 22.

Before and after

For engineering enthusiasts, Doug recommends the Engine Room Experience, a 45-minute technical tour of the SS Keewatin’s powerhouse at the Great Lakes Museum in Kingston.

Also in Kingston, we rent e-bikes from Ahoy Rentals and sample the K&P Rail Trail, diverting to Kingston Mills lockstation to purchase our lockage permit.

In Ottawa we spend two days visiting museums. The National Galley features glass architecture, an outdoor spider sculpture, and extensive collections such as Canada’s most famous landscape painters, the Group of Seven. The Canadian Museum of History, just across the river from Ottawa, is the most-visited museum, but it is well-designed and spacious; we spend more than three hours in the chronological exhibits of the Canadian History Hall.

The verdict

Early season is an excellent time to paddle the Rideau Waterway, especially if you are a person who enjoys the burst of spring and new beginnings. We suggest going mid-May, as soon as the navigation season opens (plan to be in a less-busy section on the May long weekend) and finishing in early June (two nuisances – blackflies and jet skis – appeared on the last two days of our trip, June 10-11).

Stay healthy and have fun were our goals for this three-week canoe trip on the Rideau Canal, and those goals were easily achieved. A very Canadian experience, the perfect way to celebrate sixty years of marriage and thirty years of canoe-tripping (we got a late start).