On googlemaps.com, if you type
"rideau canal" there is only one photo associated with the place in this fairly historically recent understanding of geographies, it is also situated in the section of the canal that contains the Ottawa locks at the end of the long slack-water system that is the entirety of the 'Rideau Canal' (check out the link from UNESCO for a wonderful overview of what is actually included in the 'Rideau Canal' water system). In an attempt to grapple with how colonization do violence to geographies, I looked for some visual representations of the Rideau Canal to contrast with my own. I have written below two short narratives of place based on what I see in the photo and my understanding of their historical positionings based on
Library and Archives Canada,
Archives of Ontario and
Parks Canada's websites.
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| Henry Pooley, 1833 |
In 1833, the artist, Henry Pooley sits with his watercolours on the hill which we now know as Parliament Hill to depict the landscape in a state of transition. The trees in the foreground reveal this state as one is cut down, one dead but still standing, and the middle one attempting to continue to grow on the barren rockface along the river. Most of the landscape depicts the 'untamed' wilderness of the area, that was largely undeveloped at the time. The view is vast and deep, as if the forest go on forever as the delicately fade into the sky. This depicts the sense of the power of the natural landscape during this time as it is very much involved in the setting of the scene Pooley paints. On the far shore however, the shoreline shows the dirt of where the trees have been cut and the stumps removed, the beginnings of colonizing and controlling the land. There appears a small building in the middle ground of the painting and the edges of the locks of the canal are visible in the bottom corner of the painting. They are not front and centre and consequently not as 'present' for Pooley as the natural vastness. Also, around the locks the earth is bare and raw, with no grass depicting the newness of the development of the locks for this area. This is interesting to note however, as the canal was officially opened in 1832 (Parks Canada, 2012), a year before Pooley's painting. Perhaps for Pooley, the more intersting scene was not the man-made one, but the natural one as his view looks out into the wilderness from edge of the settlement that later becomes Ottawa downtown. The detail is put most into the flora in the foreground as the shading and colours are most vivid in the small plants that grow most near. Bytown is obscrured from view, but Colonel By's house is visible on the hill at the edge of the painting. In later depictions of the canal, this view very much shifts focus.
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| Thomas Burrowes, 1845 |
The next view in our visual history of place is now more than 10 years later. In 1845, Thomas Burrowes also used watercolour to depict a similar scene of the final locks into the Ottawa river. He positions himself on the other side of the locks from Pooley's position above and much closer to the water. There is far more of human presence in this painting, not just with the person in the foreground, but with the pieces of colonialism and settlement that are more present than before. The Lockmaster's house is absent from view in this painting, but the locks are front and centre in the painting. They are painted with precision, as the lines of the stone walls are crisp and neat, the doors of the locks themselves detailed and precise. The earth around the locks is no longer bare but is green with grass. The landscape around the locks is much more manicured and 'civilized' with a fence and a roadway.
waterway is alive with activity. There is a steamboat, as well as several other smaller vessels on the river. There are also logs being floated downriver for some building. The far shore is now populated. There are several buildings on the far bank and much more deforestation than in ten years prior and in Pooley's conception. Burrowes was far more interested in the activity of the canal and the waterway, everything is in action, the person in the foreground, the boats on the water, it is a depiction of a place that is no longer serene in the natural sense, but alive with humanness.
Now thinking back to my own understandings of the canal and my narrative of the past, the canal for me is far more closely linked to Burrowes' vision of humanness and activity. It is even more linked to this then Burrowes' conception of the canal, because I have found that it is the interaction with the landscape, or cityscape, that makes a historical narrative of place meaningful.
References
Burrowes, T. (1845). North entrance of the Rideau Canal from the Ottawa river. [watercolour]. Thomas Burrowes fonds. Item reference code C 1-0-0-0- 14, Archives of Ontario, Ottawa, ON.
Parks Canada. (2012). The history of the Rideau canal.
Rideau canal national historic site. Retrieved from http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/on/rideau/natcul/natcul2.aspx
Pooley, H. (1833). Rideau canal, Ottawa. [watercolour]. Library and Archives Canada
(Acc. No. 1990-505-1), Retrieved from http://collectionscanada.gc.ca/pam_archives/index.php?fuseaction=genitem.displayItem&lang=eng&rec_nbr=2837169&rec_nbr_list=496636,496634,2266600,2266596,2836160,2897080,3317484,3326184,3326194,2837169
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