Lock Wall

There is a peculiar phenomenon on the Trent-Severn Waterway called the lock wall. Phenomenon is probably not the correct word. It is more of a location or maybe a state of mind. The waterway has forty-four locks of various types spread inconsistently over approximately 240 statue miles. Some are isolated individuals; others proudly display themselves and even others overwhelm their environment. There are small neglected backwaters unkempt and unloved, and some in park like settings with flower and/or vegetable gardens pristinely maintained.

A few are proud technological achievements from the 19th and 20th centuries, and more than a few that still use manpower to open and close valves and gates. There is quite a mix of history and ingenuity, technology and craftsmanship involved. Above all they are a study in pure persistence. To have the vision to build this in the 1800’s in the middle of the wilderness is very laudable.

Most of these locks sprung from the zeal to strip the land of every tree and mineral that had managed to grow or be deposited over billions of years. Many of the little hamlets where these locks are located have their stellar figure that came from afar to developed saw and grist (whatever that is) mills. The stories are of boom and bust. We were able relive them while visiting the homes now turned into surprisingly well-done museums.

Of course the trees have regrown. As we cruise on the rivers, canals and lakes that make up the Trent-Severn Waterway many a white pine is beginning to reach out to the sky above the canopy of lessor conifers. The type of forest as well as the geology changes as we travel east.

To get to Kirkfield Lift Lock #36 Carrie Rose climbed to over eight hundred feet and now she is on the way down. The forests have gone from pure conifers, stunted by altitude and climate to now, just past Peterborough Lift Lock #21, mainly lush deciduous. The landscape keeps changing. After crossing into Lake Huron’s North Channel we were amidst the Canadian Shield. The granite and quartz of every shade from white to pink to brown is impossible to ignore, as is the violent forces that created this primordial land. Billions of years of the earth history rests unmasked.

This continued through Georgian Bay and passed Port Severn, our entry point into the waterway, when sudden I noticed gray, muddy like chips of rock all over the boat. I looked around and here was sedimentary rock, but not like sandstone or limestone with their compacted mass. This was more like loose ill formed concrete or even clay. What the hell happened to The Shield?

As I often do when I have a burning question (at least when the internet is not available) I bought a book: Peterson Field Guide to the Geology of Eastern North America. Now I won’t say that it was easy going. Talk about an entire new nomenclature of unpronounceable words, i.e. gneiss, metagraywacke, synclinorium, Ordovician and orogeny. And then there is the span of time. The earliest for our location is the Paleozoic eon coming in at 250,000,000 years, the latest being the early Archean eon at 3,900,000,000 years. Carrie Rose lived within the domain of rocks billions of years old on the way to Lake Simcoe, then found herself in sedimentary rock mere hundreds of million years old.

It was disconcerting, worse it was boring. I had had enough of this wimpy gray nondescript jumble of soft rock. I longed to be back in the Archean eon again where the earth’s processes are palpable in the rock. And then after Bobcaygeon Lock #32 on the way to Youngs Point Lock #27 the Canadian Shield reappeared with its curiously rounded islets that just tolerate a few tenacious pines dotting the waterway.

But I am way off base here. I meant to talk about the interactions between the various cruising boats while tied up to the lock walls for the night, but what are human interactions compared to the drama hidden within the rocks.


Peterborough Lift Lock


Church resting upon the Canadian Shield


Lock Wall