Canadian Gardening: Canada Through Your Eyes part 2, 1 by ViolaAnn

ViolaAnn wrote:
We took a route which went down along a series of 8 locks which take the Rideau Canal to the Ottawa River. These are original locks and are opened by hand.

The construction of the Rideau Canal was proposed shortly after the War of 1812, when there remained a persistent threat of attack by the United States on the British colony of Upper Canada.

The initial purpose of the Rideau Canal was military, as it was intended to provide a secure supply and communications route between Montreal and the British naval base in Kingston, Ontario. Westward from Montreal, travel would proceed along the Ottawa River to Bytown (now Ottawa), then southwest via the canal to Kingston and out into Lake Ontario (and vice versa for eastward travel from Kingston to Montreal). The objective was to bypass the stretch of the St. Lawrence River bordering New York State, a route which would have left British supply ships vulnerable to attack or a blockade of the St. Lawrence.

Once the canal was constructed, no further military engagements took place between Canada and the United States. Although the Rideau Canal never had to be used as a military supply route, it played a pivotal role in the early development of Canada. Prior to the locks being completed on the St. Lawrence in the late 1840s, the Rideau served as the main travel route for immigrants heading westward into Upper Canada, and for heavy goods (timber, minerals, grain) from Canada's hinterland heading east to Montreal. Tens of thousands of British immigrants travelled the Rideau in this period. Hundreds of barge loads of goods were shipped each year along the Rideau, allowing Montreal to compete commercially, in the 1830s and 40s, with New York (which had the Erie Canal), as a major North American export port.

The Canal also played a pivotal role in the development of Ottawa because before it was built, the major development in this area was on the Québec side of the Ottawa River.