Merrickville

The Rideau Canal was built between 1826 and 1832 under Colonel John By to give a military route from Montreal to Kingston that avoided the St. Lawrence and the American shore, and Merrickville, founded in 1794 around William Merrick's mills, was already a thriving village of about three hundred when the canal builders arrived and grew further around its lock station. The blockhouse here, built in 1832 to defend the locks, is the largest of the four surviving on the canal and holds a museum. The village kept an unusual concentration of stone and brick buildings from the nineteenth century, now occupied by artisans, and it markets itself as the jewel of the Rideau. The canal is UNESCO listed as the best preserved slackwater canal in North America.

History

William Merrick, a Loyalist from Springfield, Massachusetts, founded the village in 1794, drawn by the water power: he dammed the river, built grist, saw and carding mills, and in 1821 a stone house above them. When the canal builders arrived in 1827, Merrick's Mills was a thriving community of about 300; the canal fed its mills and trade and by 1851 it was an impressive industrial centre, and although Smiths Falls later overtook it as a railway hub, a power company was formed here in 1915 and the woollen mill worked until 1954 (Wikipedia, Merrickville-Wolford).

What's there

• The 1832 blockhouse - the largest surviving on the canal, now a museum.
• The lock station - working locks operated by hand as they were built.
• The stone village - nineteenth-century buildings occupied by craftspeople.
• The industrial ruins - remains of mills beside the canal.

When to go

May to October; the locks operate in the navigation season and are hand-cranked, which is worth watching. The blockhouse museum is seasonal. Winter brings skating on parts of the canal further north.

Before you go

The blockhouse and lock operation are seasonal only. The village is small and walked in an hour. Shops lean heavily to craft and antiques.

Nearby

Ottawa lies northeast; Perth is west.