Trouble on the Rideau

Canal struggles with reduced traffic, shorter hours

After a winter of discontent over proposed fee increases, many who use or depend on the Rideau Canal say Ontario’s only UNESCO World Heritage site is enduring a troubled season.

May and June figures from Parks Canada show the number of boaters using the canal was down more than 30 per cent over 2012.

Users and canal advocates say the new restricted locks hours are deterring boaters, locks staff are demoralized and heritage interpretation along the 202-kilometre waterway has virtually ceased.

Emails exchanged by boaters and business owners are filled with complaints and dire predictions. “The Rideau is a mess and it is about to implode,” Kanata boat owner Brian Cowper, a particularly vociferous critic of Parks Canada, declared last week.

In another recent email, photographer Paul Toogood, an avid boater who lives near the Rideau system, said “the conversation between boaters has been negative” at every lockstation he has visited this year.

Toogood wrote that one Parks Canada employee told him he knew of 81 boats formerly based in the waterway’s central section that have permanently moved to the St. Lawrence River.

“I am personally beginning to question my own reasons for boating and if boating is worth the expense, given how much doom and gloom is hanging over us this season,” he wrote.

Earlier this year, it was Park’s Canada’s proposal to dramatically increase lockage and mooring fees that was the focus of concern. But Environment Minister Peter Kent froze lockage fees for three years in May, and planned increases in mooring fees won’t come into effect until 2014, assuming they’re approved.

Now, it’s the reduced hours of lock operation that’s “the big negative,” Sean Horsfall, owner of Len’s Cove Marina on Big Rideau Lake in Portland, said in an interview. “People just can’t get where they want to get to.”

Parks Canada announced the reduced hours last fall, after Kent vetoed a proposal to shorten the boating season by several weeks.

The canal opened as usual on Victoria Day weekend this year and will close on Thanksgiving Day weekend. But to save money, cash-strapped Parks Canada trimmed the hours of operation at lockstations by two hours a day in the peak summer season and by one hour in the spring and fall shoulder seasons.

According to some boaters, that has led to traffic jams at some lockstations as resident boaters race to get back to their homes before the locks close.

Every weekend, Toogood said he sees fellow boaters who stay in the marina, or are “shortening their trips and worrying about — and stressing all morning over — making it back through the locks in good time.”

Horsfall said the shorter hours are affecting the ability of resident boaters to get out of their own lakes. Increasing the hours of operation — and communicating that widely — “is vital and the most important thing right at the moment,” he said.

While that would be a short-term solution with very positive benefits, “it’s not going to address (Parks Canada’s) long-term lack of understanding of how our system works,” he said.

“One thing that’s abundantly clear is that the status quo’s not working,” Horsfall said. “They’re not marketing well, not communicating well, they’re not appearing to have the best interests of all the stakeholders on the canal at heart.”

In an email Friday, Parks Canada blamed the drop in boat traffic in May and June on unseasonably cold, wet spring weather, adding: “We are optimistic that the July boating traffic will start to improve.”

The agency said 6,444 boats used the canal in June, compared to 8,157 in June 2012. The count for May was 1,643 boats, compared to 2,428 the previous May.

But Parks Canada noted that the start of last year’s boating season was warm and sunny. In 2011, when the weather was wet and cold, boating numbers in May and June were similar to this year, it said.

Whatever the explanation, many have noticed the decline in boat traffic.

Frank Folts, the 79-year-old American who owns the iconic Hotel Kenney at Jones Falls, passes the lockstation daily during his walk to work from his home overlooking the hotel. “I don’t see boats. They’re just not around,” he said.

Ottawa city councillor Jan Harder retreats to a trailer at Westport in summer. “On Canada Day weekend I sent out a tweet, a picture of the docks at Westport,” she recalled. “And I said, ‘Parks Canada, what have you done?’ They were empty.”

Blaming the weather “is so much bull,” Harder said. Parks Canada’s stewardship of the canal “is affecting everything. Westport is a vibrant place. It’s not nearly as busy as it usually is.”

Folts, who chats with lock workers at Jones Falls every day, has been impressed over the years by how dedicated and sincere they are. “They like to entertain people, and they’re proud of it,” he said.

“But that pride’s gone. There are guys who now look forward to retirement. I don’t think money’s really the issue. It’s how they are treated as partners in this whole thing (by Parks Canada). I don’t think they’re looked upon as partners.”

Folts said the railings on a pedestrian bridge connecting his hotel property to the locks at Jones Falls are “literally crumbling. In a couple of case, they just put two-by-fours on the top, and didn’t even bother painting them. It’s not the right way to handle it.”

For Ken Watson, who runs the most comprehensive Rideau waterway website, the big concern is Parks Canada’s withdrawal of heritage interpretation this year. “They seem to have abandoned heritage completely,” he said.

At Jones Falls, a historic blacksmith’s shop that formerly gave visitors a glimpse of a lost art has been boarded up, Watson said. Sweeney House, the residence of the first Jones Falls lockmaster, used to feature a student in period costume. Now, nobody’s there. Similar things have happened at other lockstations.

“The Rideau is not being looked after the way a cultural heritage site is supposed to be,” Watson said. “I’ve heard some rumblings that UNESCO is getting a little bit concerned, or they’re certainly hearing concerns.”

Because of a major restructuring last fall that eliminated the position of Rideau Canal superintendent, Parks Canada doesn’t even have a management plan in place for the waterway at present, Watson said.

Jewel Cunningham, Parks Canada’s director of Ontario Waterways, has said there likely won’t be a new management plan until 2015.

“It’s almost an ad hoc type of a system that they’re running on the Rideau now,” Watson said.