Crashing and banging down the Conestogo
ive rivers define our region: The Nith, the Conestogo, the Eramosa, the Speed and the mighty Grand. In this week’s instalment of The Watershed we tell the story of the Conestogo
ST. JACOBS — It’s been dammed, rerouted, polluted, exploited and cursed. But still the Conestogo River just rolls along.
To the Mennonite pioneers who settled this region, the waterway reminded them of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. To our canoe, it was a rock-strewn terror.
But part of the appeal of the Conestogo River is that it refuses to be easy. It’s not kind to boats or barns or basements, and does not concern itself with man’s petty problems.
We learned about the river’s challenges pretty quickly after setting in at St. Jacobs, in late summer. The water was so low that we scraped, bumped and banged our way to where the Conestogo meets the Grand River just outside the village of Conestogo, several hours away.
Fortunately, for this trip, we were paddling in a heavy-duty Coleman canoe built sometime in the Cold War. It’s practically a tank on water,
which is the perfect kind of unsinkable boat you want for dodging boulders in the Conestogo River.
We set into the river in a little park near Block Three Brewing and the St. Jacobs & Aberfoyle Model Railway. There’s plenty of free parking, and the water is just metres away.
Named by Mennonite settlers after the Conestoga River in Pennsylvania, the Conestogo snakes through farmland of Mapleton, Wellesley and Woolwich townships, past the northern edge of Waterloo and under the roar of the Highway 85 bridge before draining into the Grand.
The river’s name has changed plenty of times in its history, evolving from Canastoga to Canistoga to Conestago to Canestogo, according to research by historian Rych Mills. In the mid 1800s, postmaster Charles Hendry suggested a new version — Conestogo — and it eventually stuck.
Our local river is much smaller than the American version that inspired its name. That watercourse, named from Kanastoge or “place of the immersed pole” in the Indigenous Iroquoian language, was famous as the home of the Conestoga wagon, the birthplace of “the stogie” cigar and the site of the first steamboat that floated in the U.S.
There’s little chance you’d ever get a steamboat to float on our Conestogo River. In low water, it can be a struggle to get a canoe down the river.
In spring, it’s a different story. A river that might have a flow of about three cubic metres per second in summer, swells and becomes a muddy tributary that swallows up farmland. In May 1974, that rate increased to 595 cubic metres per second — part of widespread flooding that caused millions in damage downstream.
For decades, floods were a menace to villagers in St. Jacobs and Conestogo, and farmers who owned land along the river. As early as the 1890s there was talk of the need for a dam.
The Grand River Conservation Authority finally tried to tame the spring floods in the 1950s by building the Conestogo Dam near Glen Allen. That project, openly protested by residents who lived upriver from it, created an artificial lake and gave protection to communities downriver.
Today, the Conestogo River, first named by Benjamin Eby in 1806, is a more controlled version of its former wild, destructive self, with more predictable but lower water flows. That means it’s safer for communities downstream, but can be tough slogging for canoeists.
The river still floods, but people who lived along the Conestogo before the dam was built say flooding was always a part of life.
“When the cows needed milking, we sat in the water and we milked them,” said Elinor Rau, 83, who grew up in a family farm at the confluence of the Conestogo and the Grand rivers.
Her family’s barn was in the floodplain, and watching the water rise up her home’s steps was an annual event. They’d stick a peg in the ground and see how fast the river would climb.
“In our basement, everything we kept high. Our furnace and hot water heaters were on the main floor. We built according to the river. There was a respect for the river,” Rau said.
Some floods were worse than others. In 1948, her great-grandfather watched the raging river tear out the bridge in front of her house. Six years later, hurricane Hazel ripped through the region and woke her mother up in the middle of the night, her bed surrounded by water.
“We had to take a boat into the kitchen. My mother said ‘My toaster’s down there,’” Rau said. “I said, ‘Don’t worry about the toaster. It’s a little damp now.’”
When we paddled the Conestogo, flooding was the last of our concerns. Every time we started to relax, we would scrape bottom, or the river would throw another boulder at us — bang! crash! thump! — just to keep us alert. But as quickly as obstacles came, they’d pass and the water was calm again.
It was those moments of reward that made the trip worth it. If you squint just right, travelling the Conestogo River is a bit like paddling in a time machine, back to this region’s rural origins.
Outside the village of Conestogo, a bald eagle watched over us as we passed under the Conestogo Bridge, one of the oldest metal truss bridges remaining in Canada, built in 1886. Songbirds cheered us along from the riverbank.
At times, it felt like we were travelling on a river in the U.S. Midwest or somewhere in Texas, even — with weeping willows, quiet pastureland and scrub brush on all sides. A group of riders appeared on horseback and followed along the water’s edge.
You don’t need to open your eyes to know you’re in farm country when you paddle the Conestogo. You can smell it all around you.
That agricultural influence has also made things complicated for this river. Outbreaks of toxic algae blooms were once common. In 1989, the appearance of a mysterious, two-metre-high blob of brown foam near St. Jacobs was blamed on fertilizer run-off from area farms.
Throughout its history, people have tried to bend the Conestogo to their own will. The river was the natural power source that fuelled the mills of St. Jacobs and Conestogo, and drew its first settlers there.
By the mid 1800s, Conestogo and St. Jacobs were bustling pioneer villages, with hotels, blacksmith shops, distilleries, foundries, flour and grain mills that crowded along the river’s edge.
So much of early life here was dictated by the river. It was the Conestogo that first brought electricity to St. Jacobs, when the mill’s owner would sell surplus power to the rest of the village — which was shut off at 11 p.m. at night.
“It meant life. It meant employment. It meant food,” said Jane Epp, 76, whose family owned mills in both villages.
“Even the flooding served a purpose. It brought nutrients to the low-lying areas, and was great for growing corn.”
Her family earned their livelihood from the river’s power, and were occasionally humbled by it. In 1948, spring flooding ripped out the concrete abutments of the dam that fed her father’s mill.
“I was there to see it. It was quite something. The road on the other side of the river was completely underwater,” Epp said.
Occasionally, the destruction was man-made. In the 1970s, a Hawkesville-area farmer was ordered to demolish an illegal dike he’d built to reroute the Conestogo, giving him 20 extra acres of crop land. His homemade dam was eroding neighbours’ properties and increased the risk of flooding.
Yet, even in today’s post-dam, low water-era, there still remains a little current, a few spots of mild rapids, and the odd fast-moving channel to keep things interesting. And whoever is paddling in front needs to keep a sharp eye out for rocks poking out from under the river’s surface.
It’s pretty clear when the Conestogo finally runs smack into the Grand. At the confluence of the two rivers, there’s an obvious dividing line between the muddy, chocolate milk-flow of the Conestogo, and the more clear, clean-flowing water of the Grand.
Our canoe looked relieved as we pulled it out of the water. It had survived the Conestogo. But the river, a little more tame now than it used to be, had still left its mark.