The Duke of Wellington and the Rideau Canal

The Duke of Wellington and the Rideau Canal

At the close of the War of 1812, the British military authorities were convinced that in any future war with the United States, the Americans would cut the highly vulnerable St. Lawrence River transport system by which troops, guns, munitions and supplies were forwarded inland to the defence of Upper Canada (Ontario) from the ocean port of Montreal.  As a result explorations were undertaken to determine if a secure interior water communication could be established by way of the Ottawa River, and the Rideau and Cataraqui rivers, through the interior wilderness of Upper Canada to Kingston on Lake Ontario.  In the postwar period plans were prepared by the British Army Corps of Royal Engineers to construct canals on the Ottawa River, and a canal through the Rideau interior to Kingston along the natural waterways.

Efforts to get the Rideau Canal project underway were delayed by a postwar depression; although several reconnaissance surveys were completed along the proposed canal route. With the provincial government of Upper Canada unable to finance the construction of the Rideau Canal, the Duke of Wellington, in his position as  Master General of the Board of Ordnance in Britain, decided in the spring of 1825 that the Board of Ordnance would construct the Rideau Canal, and a Commission was appointed, comprising several senior officers of the Corps of Royal Engineers to visit Canada, examine its defences, and prepare a preliminary cost estimate for constructing the fortifications and canals, including the Rideau Canal, needed to defend Canada.  (The Board of Ordnance was responsible for manufacturing guns and munitions for the British Army and the Royal Navy, and for the transport of the same.)

In the spring of 1826 Lt. Col. John By was appointed by the Board of Ordnance to superintend the construction of the Rideau Canal, and was provided with an engineering staff comprising several  officers of the Corps of Royal Engineers and a civilian Clerk of Works, and funding from the British government – a parliamentary grant – to undertake the initial work.  In the financial climate of the period, if the Duke of Wellington had not put his support behind the Rideau Canal project, its construction would not have been undertaken.

During the construction of the canal when costs began to soar due to the prevalence of malaria, heavy flooding, and the encountering of hard rock in a number of the canal excavations, it was Wellington in his subsequent capacity as Prime Minister of Great Britain and First Lord of the Treasury (January 1828-November 1830),  who secured a greatly increased funding from Parliament to ensure that the canal could be completed.

It was Lt. Col. By who in the fall of 1826 chose the Entrance Valley for the Rideau Canal, and ordered that a townsite survey be undertaken on the high ground for a new town (Bytown), and named the streets of the new town.

It was Lt. Col. By who named Wellington Street and Rideau Street as the first two streets of the village. This is a key point that needs to be established as it was Lt. Col. By who named Wellington Street in honour of the Duke of Wellington, the patron and proponent of the Rideau Canal project. This has been confirmed by checking the original Royal Engineers townsite survey map of the spring of 1827  in the Library and Archives Canada, or and a reproduction of that map sketch from Bytown in 1831.

Despite the best efforts of Lt. Col. By, costs continued to escalate during the construction of the Rideau Canal  to a final cost of £822, 840, by far the greatest expenditure on any defence work in the British Empire to that date.  With Wellington no longer in power, the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury in the new Whig reform government censured Lt. Col. By for his expenditures and recalled him to England to face an investigation.  Although Lt. Col. By was cleared of any wrong-doing in his conduct of the Rideau Canal project, the reform government refused to bestow any honours on him in recognition of his outstanding engineering achievement in constructing a major steamboat navigation – the Rideau Canal (1826-1832) – through a virtual wilderness.

Had the Duke of Wellington not instigated the Rideau Canal project, and secured the funding required from Parliament, the Rideau Canal would not have been built, and the City of Ottawa would not have been established when it was, or in the precise location where it is, and the street layout and street names would have been different than what is found in the older areas of the Byward market and along Wellington St.   Our predecessors knew who was ultimately responsible for the construction of the Rideau Canal, and indirectly for the founding of Ottawa, the future capital of Canada, and recognized that fact by naming the major street of the town/city after the Duke of Wellington.