VIDEO OF MY RIDEAU CANAL CRUISE

I adored the five-day, small-ship cruise I took with Ontario Waterway Cruises in June 2014 onboard the Kawartha Voyageur. Here is a sample of my experiences:

© Photos by Pharos 2014. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

Start here at the first day of the cruise and work up. 

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.

RURAL QUEBEC AND BLUE SEA

The moment you cross the Ottawa River going east, you immediately know the province is different. The traffic lights are strung sideways, there's not a word of English on the storefronts and advertisements, and traffic is just a bit less disciplined.

I'm heading north up into the Gatineau hills for about 100 kms to visit Blue Sea, a place my mother-in-law spent her girlhood summers. I drive up Highway 105, that would be unrecognizable to her; today it's a four-lane freeway for the first half of the journey. Then the road meanders through rolling hills, prosperous farms, and tiny villages. Its ranching country, and fat beef steers and good-looking horses predominate among fields of silage. The landscape is soothing and a lush green from the spring rain. Purple lilacs are blooming in profusions here and their perfume fills the air. There's not a cloud in the sky.


At Gracefield, I turn left and follow a country road for the last eleven kilometres. At the end is a T-junction and the lake. Across the road stands a larger-than-life statue of Jesus of the Sacred Heart, covered in gold paint, that perpetually blesses the community that was founded by the church. Very few people are in evidence this morning. The lake is certainly bright blue and crystal clear. Houses and cottages ring its banks.

I turn right and follow the lake's contour, but cannot see it for trees. After driving for a while, it's obvious that the entire waterfront is privately-owned. Same on the other bank. But at the village at the south end where I arrived, there is a boat launch (one of many around the lake) and a view. Blue Sea is the largest lake in the area - 10 kms by 3 kms - and sports seventeen islands, as well as a lake monster (hippocampus) last seen in 1913. With a population of 678 spread around the lake, it's cottage country and a boaters' paradise.

Without a boat, I search for a restaurant for lunch. There's only one — a tiny unlicensed, family-run café with a big name, that tests my French considerably. I speak a bit of Parisian French but not the rural patois of Quebec.

On a glorious sunny day the drive is worth it, but probably not on a grey, dull day. It would be better still with a boat, which I'm sure my late mother-in-law would have had available and enjoyed.

Visit www.bluesea.ca for more info and find out why it has an English name — there's a good reason.


IMAGES: © Photos by Pharos 2014

MY SASQUATCH SAFARI

The weather didn't cooperate and we waited until the very end of our June 2013 stay in Harrison Hot Springs, BC, for the grey clouds and rain to clear off the lake and mountains to do my first Sasquatch safari. My husband checked the weather forecasts hourly and I scurried in and out to see if the clouds were lifting. Phone calls to and from Bill Miller the operator of Sasquatch Country Adventures punctuated our wait.

Tom (L) and Bill with casts of
Sasquatch foot prints they've found

The Harrison region has the highest number of Sasquatch sightings on the planet and I was determined to talk to experts. A year before this visit I had interviewed two of them—Bill and his colleague, Tom Steenburg. Truthfully I had been expecting crackpots and was delighted to find that they were serious, conscientous researchers who investigate every reported sighting. Yes, they are certainly obsessed, but very careful, and have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject back to the 1970s.

Finally I got my chance to go out into the back country with Bill and experience what it is like to try and find evidence of the elusive animal. It was an adventure worth the wait.

The June morning was cool and the mist hung between the mountain ridges as we piled in Bill's small Polaris 4-wheel drive vehicle. Cameras at the ready we roared off, climbing steadily on the eastern side of Harrison Lake. The bush was dense beside the narrow trail—so dense it was impenetrable. How were we to see a Sasquatch? Bill reminded me, " You won't unless it steps out to cross the trail."

I tried to focus about fifty yards into the bush as we bounced along. Bill kept his eye on the trail for scat and other indications of wildlife. Black bear, deer, and cougars are common here where there is no habitation for hundreds of miles north. I had noticed the bear spray on the dashboard. But we saw nothing except a mother Ruffed Grouse protecting her young. She was not about to move as we edged forward through the greenery. Then in a great flurry of beating wings she flew onto a branch and watched us pass.

Soon the trail narrowed and we pushed through wet new growth from the night's rain that soaked us. Still climbing we popped out into open country and the view of the lake and mountains opened up for us. Wild flowers grew in profusion at 3000 feet and we stood transfixed by the view of Mt. Breakenridge and Long Island as Bill told us stories of the sightings that had taken place all around us.

It is an awe-inspiring tale starting with the First Nations' oral histories from thousands of years ago, to the fur traders' journals of the 1800s, and ending with the sightings reported in the last year.

Bill's Polaris vehicle that makes the expedition
possible for all ages.

I never saw anything resembling a Sasquatch or even a foot print, but the safari was an experience of a lifetime and one I want to do again.

Bill ended the adventure by giving me a cast of one of the foot prints he had taken in the bush in the Harrison area. Meanwhile, until I go again in September, I'm reading all I can on the subject and want to believe. However, Bill warns me, "It's better to be sceptical and not carried away by emotion, or you may think you've seen one when you haven't."







IMAGES:  © Photos by Pharos 2013. All rights reserved.