Thursday 25 November 2019--The Rideau Canal's heyday as an important commercial route lasted a mere decade or two. Railroads replaced water routes as freight corridors, with varying consequences for Ontario mill towns. Smiths Falls happened to sit on the canal and two different rail lines, becoming a major industrial center as a result. Merrickville survived, the rail line passing nearby. Other towns weren't so lucky. In 1812, according to Wikipedia, the bustling village of Burritts Rapids, five miles or so north of Merrickville, had "telegraphic and daily mail, two general stores, a bakery, a millinery shop, two shoe shops, a tin and stove store, a grist mill, a woolen mill, a tannery, three blacksmith shops, three wagon shops, a cabinet shop, two churches, two schools, two hotels, a bank and an Orange Lodge." I find little of that on my visit this morning. This was the site of the first bridge built across the Rideau River. The canal channel was cut on the other side of the village, making it an island. The main point of interest today is the swing bridge that allows road and canal traffic to cross.

[An interpretation sign notes that the bridge is comprised of a combination of Pratt and Funk trusses. I'm not a truss junkie by any means, but I'm curious enough to look these up later, and am disappointed to find that there's a typo here--it's a Fink truss, not Funk. If there is in fact no such thing as a Funk truss, someone should invent one.]

Off I go to Almonte (the e is silent), a mill town thirty miles northwest. It's been amalgamated into the municipality of Mississippi Mills, centered around the Mississippi River--not Huck Finn's Mississippi River, obviously. Almonte is the birthplace of Dr James Naismith, the inventor of basketball. Naismith, born to Scottish parents, studied at McGill University in Montreal, and then studied and taught at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. It was at that school (which evolved into Springfield College) that he developed and codified the rules of basketball. He got out of Springfield, earning his medical degree in Denver, and then establishing himself as athletic director and basketball coach at the University of Kansas, becoming the progenitor of an illustrious coaching tree that includes Phog Allen, Dean Smith, and Adolph Rupp. I hardly need to mention the worldwide popularity of his brainchild. His legacy includes the Basketball Hall of Fame in my hometown.

I take a stroll around town, observing the falls and the old mill buildings. The textile mills survived into the 1980s, thanks in part to a rail line running through town. The afternoon is increasingly dark and damp, very Novemberish. Pop into a deli for lunch. There's a Thanksgiving panini offered, turkey, brie, and cranberry sauce. It's Thanksgiving at home, isn't it? I hope the panini is offered in celebration of that, rather than being left over from Canadian Thanksgiving, which was six weeks ago. It doesn't really matter to me--I came here to get away from Thanksgiving. I have ham and cheese instead.