A St. Lawrence interlude - visiting Ontario and cruising the St. Lawrence River - Column

National Review, Feb 1, 1993 by Priscilla L. Buckley

TO GET TO Kingston, Ontario, is not the easiest thing in the world. But to Kingston (140 miles from Montreal, 160 from Toronto) you must go if you desire to cruise the St. Lawrence River from Lake Ontario to Quebec City on the Canadian Empress, a relatively new riverboat with a vintage look. Under the period facade, the acres of shining brass railing, and the Victorian lookalike lamps, the Empress is a very modern ship designed for the tourist who wishes to combine an informal cruise with a bit of lazy colonial history and--at the time we took it, in mid October--sensational autumn scenery. The Canadian Empress is broad of beam (30 feet); it is 108 feet long and draws under 5 feet. It carries 66 passengers and a crew of 14. Quarters are tight, particularly the sleeping quarters, which were designed for Tom Thumb. Squeezing two sets of clothes into the slim hanging closet and the single (1) tiny drawer is like trying to stuff sardines back into their can.

"Mille Iles" was what the French called them a couple of hundred years ago, and they are still known as the Thousand Islands. As the Canadian Empress threads its way among them we spot imposing mansions and tiny summer homes, boathouses, bridges, even an occasional tanker or container ship looking strangely miscast in what was once and remains, although less ostentatiously in today's mode, a playground of the wealthy. Over there, in that heavy black and white lighthouse, is where Bill Johnson, the Thousand Islands' only pirate, was imprisoned for his crimes. The house where George Pullman entertained President Grant and General Sherman is pointed out. We sail past the elegant yacht on which Thousand Island dressing was first served. The legends and tall tales proliferate, matched in richness and inventiveness by foliage in full autumnal regalia.

We draw up at Heart Island to visit Boldt Castle. It's a six-story granite monster of a place, a dream castle erected by George C. Boldt, owner of New York's original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, for his beloved wife Louise. The portrait of Boldt over a mantelpiece shows a man of substance, bearded, with pince-nez glasses, Prince Albert jacket, and high stiff collar. But beneath that Victorian starched shirt beat a romantic boy's heart. And the day his beloved wife died, George Boldt called off the three hundred workmen and left Boldt Castle as it was, three quarters completed, to crumble away over the years. Emily Bronte would have understood.

Boldt Castle, like just about everything else along the river, is closed for the season, but the caretakers have been persuaded to open it up for us, and have gone the extra mile and built a roaring fire in the huge chimney in an entrance hall whose decorated ceiling is four stories high. We are free to wander from the ruins of the never completed basement swimming pool to the turrets.

East of Prescott there were, before they were tamed, miles and miles of rapids that made the St. Lawrence almost unnavigable. In the old days much of the heavy cargo reaching the rapids en route west to the Great Lakes from Montreal and Quebec was transshipped here onto shallow bateaux, and at Prescott reloaded onto small river steamers. But the St. Lawrence Seaway (opened in 1956) changed all that, and today it is dear sailing all the way from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the American heartland.

A great lake was created, Lake St. Lawrence, and hydroelectric plants and a series of locks--some on American, some on Canadian soil--built in an extraordinary engineering feat. Seven villages were sacrificed to the lake, but the villagers were given the option of having their homes moved to two new locations nearby on land the Canadian government owned. The Seaway also elected to save some of the abandoned homes and shops from the engulfing waters of Lake St. Lawrence and move them to what is now called Upper Canada Village, a recreated rural town.

Two horse-drawn carry-alls pick us up at the Crystal Marina where we spent the night to take us to Upper Canada Village--which closed yesterday. The weather is blustery--cold breezes, grey clouds, the threat of showers. Two guides walk us through a village where today blacksmiths are not smithing, bakers not baking, spinners not spinning, cheese not fermenting, mills not grinding, cobblers not cobbling--although yesterday they still were. The mortification of our genial young guide is complete when the slide show which is the center of his presentation and will show us all these activities and much more, he promises, balks-and slideth not.

On to the locks, the first of which is a colossal disappointment; it lowers the Canadian Empress six full inches. But then we come to Eisenhower and Snell Locks, the two locks on U.S. soil, and in each the Empress sinks forty feet or more, the wet grey walls of the lock enveloping us and casting the cabins into Stygian gloom. But not for long. In 10 or 12 minutes the downstream gates open up and we sail away, arriving at Montreal five locks later, on our third day out, in time to tour the city by bus, stopping to view the exquisite Notre Dame Church with its lapis and gold ceiling and altar, and to take a cool, wet walk in the Place Jacques Cartier and the market district of old Montreal.