Yesterday we left Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu at 8:30 AM to drive the half mile to Lock 9, the first on the Chambly Canal, for the first lockage at 9:00 AM. We tied up to the lock wall upstream and the friendly Lockmaster waked over to greet and brief us. Completed in 1843, the Chambly Canal is very narrow, less than 50 feet wide in many places and the locks are all hand-operated, with the original machinery still in use. The canal is operated by Parks Canada and its mostly college-aged staff are welcoming, professional, efficient and bilingual. We went through six of the nine Chambly locks and several lift and swing bridges with a Quebecois couple on a larger cabin cruiser, with enough room for our two boats in the locks, but probably not a third.
After 11 miles and three hours, we tied up behind another American Looper boat at the town wall in Chambly, QC. Map Link: Chambly, QC. We are flying three flags now, as you can see in the above photos. Our American flag is on the stern, as always, but we’ve moved the AGLCA burgee to the bow and now display the Canada courtesy flag from our masthead, as per nautical custom.
After securing Dragonfly, moving once to accommodate later arrivals and lunch, we visited Fort Chambly Historical Park. Built in 1711 to protect New France from British invasion, the fort was located at the beginning of the Richelieu River rapids, where a portage was required to continue south. We had a personal tour of the beautifully-restored fort by an enthusiastic and knowledgeable Parks Canada staffer before exploring a little more and ending up at Maxi’s grocery store, about 100 yards from our boat—a new record for proximity to provisions. It was another hot and humid day, with a heat index warning, but we really wanted to get out on our bikes to ride on the Chambly Canal path, which connects Chambly to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. It begin to cool somewhat after 5:00 PM, and we biked about 10 miles along the canal to the site of Fort Saint Therese, built in 1665 as part of a French offensive against the Iroquois Nation.
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After our ride, we looked briefly in town for a restaurant, but decided to have a cold dinner aboard. We ate at a picnic table in the adjacent park as the evening continued to cool, played cribbage, and talked with our daughters on the phone, as people played badminton on the lawn next to our boat and social dancing was being called in the larger park across the canal. Around 10:00 PM, a strong line of squalls dumped rain on us for a couple of hours, then everything settled down and we slept well.
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