RIDEAU CANAL CRUISE - DAY FIVE (the last day)

Underway before breakfast with filtered sunshine and enter Whitefish Lake. A swing bridge, one of many on the Rideau Canal opens to allow us through. Soon we are in Cranberry Lake where some of Colonel By's crews got lost during the canal's construction. Then it was a bog and full of mosquitoes, which caused many to die of malaria. Today it's pretty.


Through Brewers Mills lock and the Kawartha Voyageur enters a man-made cut separate from the Cataraqui River. We drop down again at Washburn lock and rejoin the river channel in the middle of what is now a lake, but once was wetlands. It is the only feature named for Colonel By years after he died.

The first sign that we are approaching Kingston are the locks, all four of them.

Under the Highway 401 and it's four miles to the city centre. As we pass under the massive bascule bridge of the La Salle Causeway, the ship leaves the historic Rideau Canal. The passengers who are leaving are packed and ready as we turn into our berth in the heart of Kingston, next to the Holiday Inn. It's cloudy and humid — maybe rain tonight.

Fond farewells resound as new friends part and passengers hug the crew who have served us so well. They gather ashore for a final photo op.

I stay aboard, eager for my second cruise from Kingston to Peterborough along the Bay of Quinte and north on the Trent-Severn Waterway.

IMAGES: © Photos by Pharos 2014. All rights reserved.