For my latest summer 2025 microadventure (number 9, if you’re keeping track,) I had a very Canadian adventure with my friend Julie – we locked through one of the beautiful and historic locks on the Rideau Canal for free, thanks to the Government of Canada’s new Canada Strong Pass.
I’ve lived in Ottawa for more than 30 years and never get tired of watching them open and close the massive wooden doors of the locks by hand, as they’ve been doing for nearly 200 years. But being inside the lock, especially in a tiny watercraft like a kayak, is extra awe-inspiring.
We picked a gorgeous morning to venture out from the public boat launch near the Manotick public library, enjoying a perfectly still and bright morning for the approximately 3.5 km paddle north-ish toward the Long Island Locks. Although this is practically in my backyard and I paddle here at least once or twice a week from April through October, I haven’t actually traversed these locks on the water.
We’re waiting at the blue dock for the Parks Canada staff to use the big metal cranks to start opening the locks. We got lucky – not only we were the only ones in line to move through the locks, but the water was already at the upper level, ready for us to enter the first of three locks.
In our (comparatively) wee kayaks, they only needed to open one door for us to be able to enter the lock. And they didn’t have to move the over a century-old swing bridge out of the way to make room for us either! The swing bridge, a historically significant hand-turned bobtail swing bridge, was first constructed over the locks at Hogs Back in 1903, dismantled and stored in 1930, and re-erected in 1935 at this location. I wasn’t paying attention to the fact that I had situated myself under the bridge in the lock until a car rumbled directly over my head!
Locking through in your kayak or canoe is easy enough. Alert the lockstation staff you want to traverse the locks, and wait for their direction. Paddle into the lock and situate yourself beside one of the long black drop cables on the lock walls and ideally use a loose strap or line to tether yourself lightly to the cable for stability. In one of the locks, I used my paddle but for the other two I just held on to the cable. (Not recommended by Parks staff, FWIW, but the easiest option if you’re not averse to a little bit of slime.) The water moves in and out of the lock surprisingly quickly and with little turbulence. You can hear the water rushing as the level drops faster than you’re expecting it to!
Once the water level drops (or raises, depending on which way you’re locking through) the lock staff will crank open the big wooden doors to let you pass through. At the Long Island locks, there are three locks in succession that move you 7.6 m (almost 25 feet) down in elevation as you move northward.
In total, it took less than 20 minutes for us to traverse all three locks. As I didn’t previously have a lockage pass for my kayaks, the lockmaster gave us passes to affix to each boat for the duration of the Canada Strong Pass season through the beginning of September.
At the base of the locks, we paddled around for a bit exploring the stunning historic stone arch dam (built 195 years ago and still solid as a rock, pardon the pun) and saying hello to the wildlife that frequents the little bay against the dam. We could have locked back through the other way, but instead we opted to portage our kayaks back up and get a bit of a workout before a leisurely paddle back to the boat launch at the library. You can also choose to launch your canoe or kayak directly from the Long Island lock station and explore from there, but I can walk to the Manotick public launch so it’s usually my first choice. (You can see the wheelie carts attached to our kayaks in some of the photos.)
We are blessed to have a world UNESCO heritage site in our midst, a perfect summer playground for novice and experience paddlers alike. If you’ve never had the experience of traversing the Rideau Canal locks in a canoe or kayak, this is your summer to try it — for free!
If you’d like to see some videos as well as photographs of our trip through the Long Island Locks in our kayaks, you can watch my Instagram reel:
I’m almost half-way through my Summer 2025 Microadventures challenge! The plan was to do 20 microadventures between the beginning of May and the end of September, and I’m at the half-way point of the challenge about a month ahead of schedule. Stay tuned to find out what comes next, and do let me know if you decide to play along on the microadventure challenge or decide to try locking through the Rideau Canal. I’d love to hear about it!