Below the first Beveridge lock in the Tay Canal, Perth, On

Eddie thinks perhaps he needs this "Canada for Dummies" shirt

The "Crystal Palace" in Perth, actually some unused bus shelters purchased from Ottawa, used here for Farmer's Market. We have seen beautiful Christmas trees in there in the winter.

Wayne was the first one in to cool off

Eddie and Wayne cooking supper.

We have stayed tied to the lock wall. We considered trying to take the boat through the next 2 locks and going on to Last Duel Park, but in the end decided to get the dinghy down and take it into town. Really easy to take the dinghy through locks, much simpler than with the big boat. Then it is about 10 km into Perth, and the speed limit is 10 km/hr, so an hour later we were in downtown Perth. Visited many shops along the main street, had lunch in a nice place called Michaels and ice cream in another shop along the street. Eddie got the Tilley hat he has been looking for, looks very nice on him. The young woman at the locks had told us to keep some speed on as we travelled to keep the deer flies off. Perhaps we were unable to go quite fast enough, there were a lot of deer flies. Most of the canal is through marsh and wetlands, lots of water lilies, reeds, we only saw one house right along the canal. Very pretty trip though. The Tay canal is not actually part of the Rideau system. It connects the town of Perth with the canal, and was built the first time shortly after the Rideau canal went through. Some citizens of Perth wanted a way to transport goods out of the area and saw a canal as very useful, so they financed the building of the Tay canal themselves. They didn't have the resources to maintain it, so after a few years it fell into disrepair. Several years later, in the 1880's, the government of the day was convinced to build a new version of the Tay Canal. In a speech in parliament, one opposition member said that this canal which had cost half a  million  dollars to build had brought in the grand sum of $58.81. It became a national scandal. However in the early 1900's, the canal was very well used by pleasure craft.

Eddie with his new Tilley hat

 After we came back to the boat, grilled hot dogs for supper, then Eddie and I went for a walk up to the next lock. There is a walking trail that goes on from there, but the bugs were coming out, only for Eddie. They apparently don't like my tough Canadian skin nearly as well. All of us got bathing suits on and got in the water to cool off before bed. It felt so good.