Travel Close to Home No. 3: What's Hiding In Your Harbour?

Along the north shore of Lake Erie, in the middle reaches, there are half a dozen small, attractive harbour towns which share some similar characteristics.

Although the landscape here is fairly level and smooth, it's also located some distance above the level of the great lake, so the shoreline tends to be dominated by steeply sloping bluffs of a fair height.  But these bluffs are composed of layers of soft sedimentary rocks, easily eroded by wind and weather and lake waves, so the shoreline areas almost always feature one or more spectacular beaches -- like this one.  You can see the bluffs in the distance of the photo.

The rivers which flow towards the lake in this area, tend to follow meandering channels because of the level landscape, but they also cut their way down into deeper and deeper valleys as they near the lake.  So these towns tend to lie either part way down or at the bottom of the slope, along the banks of the river as it approaches its mouth.  The river mouth, then, forms a small natural harbour.  It's quite common for the river mouth to have a breakwater to try to prevent the silting of the channel by the wave action of the lake.

Other common features of these small port towns include a traditional lighthouse, designed to help vessels find their way into the port (this one dates from 1840 and is the oldest wooden lighthouse in Canada)...

...and one or more classic fishing tugs at dock.  Some are converted into houseboats, but a few still pursue the traditional seine net style of commercial fishing.

The streets tend to be tree-lined, have plenty of lovely old homes, either wood or brick, and the occasional sturdy church.

The small port town which lies at the spacious mouth of Big Otter Creek is for the most part typical of the species, but it has one extraordinary feature which hardly receives the attention or fame it deserves.  In fact, it's so neatly tucked away behind the row of shops and restaurants on the street leading to the beach that you might think you were hallucinating on the drive into town when you caught a brief passing glimpse of it.

You're not.  It's here.  It's in Port Burwell.  And it's real -- very real.

This submarine, HMCS Ojibwa, served with the Canadian Navy for 33 years, from 1965 to 1998, and after retirement was laid up in Halifax.  In 2011, the government approved the vessel's transfer to the Elgin Military Museum, and the submarine was towed from Halifax up the St. Lawrence Seaway.  After a stopover in Hamilton, where the ship was fitted with special cradles to allow movement overland, HMCS Ojibwa was loaded on a barge and towed from Hamilton through the Welland Canal to Lake Erie, and to Port Burwell, where she was shifted overland from the barge at the riverbank to her present location.  The submarine opened for tours in 2013.

At this time, the interior of the sub is closed to visitors -- it would be too difficult to keep the interior with its 500,000-plus components clean and sanitized in the age of Covid-19.  But the museum still operates walk-around tours at a reduced cost, using photo placards at various points to illustrate the interiors of different parts of the vessel for visitors.  That was fine with me.  I would never have been able to visit the interior anyway, with its wormhole hatches which you have to crawl through on all fours.  My days for that kind of dexterity are long gone.

When I got there for my pre-reserved tour on Thursday, I found a small workforce in the throes of painting the submarine's exterior!  With profuse apologies, the museum offered me a walk-around tour outside the fence (topped with barbed wire) which secures the site -- at no charge.  I'm sure I got as detailed and interesting a tour as I would have had if I had been inside the fence!

The only difficulty is that, from outside the fenced enclosure, it's really difficult to photograph the entire vessel.  But I did get three good ones -- the overview above, taken from the street up the hill, is the first, with bow at the left, stern at the right.  This second one is looking up at the bulbous sonar dome mounted on the bow, three stories or more above the ground.

The conning tower, amidships, raises the submarine's overall height to the equivalent of a five-storey building. 

This third picture shows the stern, with the innovative, Canadian-designed propellers.  The blades, slightly squared off at the tips, were covered with numerous engraved grooves which helped to prevent cavitation.  Thus, unlike more conventional propellers, they left behind very little in the way of noise which could be tracked by an enemy vessel's sonar.

The tour I got was full of intriguing details about the ship's history, its construction (in Britain -- it was acquired by Canada from the British Royal Navy in an incomplete state), the interior layout, the various hazards and quirks of life aboard a submarine, and a few amusing stories which I took with a grain of salt.  I have to say that, even if I had paid for the tour, I would still feel I had gotten my money's worth out of the experience.  It was fascinating.

It's truly unfortunate that this unique attraction is so little known. 

To get to Port Burwell you have to make your way overland along various regional roads.  From either east or west, you can travel along provincial highway # 3, and turn south on regional road # 19.  From the north, you can follow road 19, which crosses Highway 401 at Ingersoll, or one or more of the various alternate routes.

This map shows you the area in which Port Burwell is located.

And here's a link to the museum website, where you can read advance information, and make online or phone reservations for a guided tour. 

HMCS Ojibwa

Travel Close to Home No. 2: Two Big Holes in the Ground

Perhaps the worst way to wake up in the morning would be to fall into an unexpected hole in the ground and slide all the way to the bottom, 22 metres (72 feet) below.

Fortunately for me, I already knew it was there.

The village of Elora, Ontario, and its two spectacular natural attractions are well-known, at least by name, but not many people will have seen them as I did the other day -- almost empty of people.

Believe me, I'm not complaining!

Due to the combination of a prolonged heat wave, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the early hours of the morning (8:30 to 10:00 am), I had the entire place almost to myself.  This is far beyond being merely unusual.  On a normal summer morning, Elora would already be well-stocked with tourists -- and on a weekend, so full of cars and visitors that you could easily have to park ten minutes walk or more away from the river.

First word of advice:  do not, repeat, do not try to visit Elora on the weekend!

Elora lies about half an hour's drive northwest of Guelph or northeast of Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario, at the junction of the Grand River and Irvine Creek. 

Over the centuries since the end of the last ice age, the Grand River has performed here exactly the same feat as the Niagara River has performed at Niagara Falls.  Beginning by falling over a steep rise of limestone rock, the river has gouged its way backwards through the layers of limestone, creating the deep gorge which is the prime scenic attraction here.  The village was actually located at the site of the waterfall at the head of the gorge, to take advantage of the water power for driving numerous mills, and the remains of these buildings still surround the cascade to the present day.

To get to the river once you're in the village, just follow the signs.  If you get lucky as I did, you may even get one of the eight or so parking spots on the circular driveway right by the entrance gate of Victoria Park.

Inside the gate, just walk straight ahead for one minute into the forest of cedar trees...

...and beyond it you'll come to the rim of the gorge.  Not to worry, despite that first photo at the head of this blog post, it's all marked off by a well-maintained modern fence.  Turn left along the fence and in a couple of minutes you'll reach this viewpoint overlooking the falls.

The flowerpot rock poised precariously in the middle of the falls is called by an oddly evocative name, the "Tooth of Time."

The Elora formation lacks the hard cap layer of dolostone which allows Niagara Falls to maintain a straight, even crest and vertical drop.  If Niagara Falls still exists 50,000 years from now, it will have eaten its way upstream past the end of that hard dolostone layer -- and then it will probably look much like a larger version of Elora's staircase waterfall, cascading over the successive layers of stone on the way down the hill.

Keep following the path past the lookout and in another minute or two you'll emerge from the park onto a quiet residential street.  Just at the point where you are about to exit the park, there's a sizable block of eroded stone sitting on the ground.  It's all pitted and gouged from the action of running water, so this stone gives you a fair idea of what the rocks under the waterfall may look like when they re-emerge as dry land.

Head back into the park, and go a little past the point where you arrived.  You'll find a stone-walled walkway with a few steps running down and out onto a narrow point of land overlooking the gorge.  You're standing on top of a sheer crag of rock known as "Lover's Leap," overlooking the junction of the Grand River with Irvine Creek.  The name derives from an indigenous ancestral story.  This is where you can see that the Elora Gorge is actually two gorges, one for each river, which join at this point.  The Irvine Creek gorge is on your right, and easily distinguished by the much smaller waterflow.

The gorge on your left, and in front of you, holds the Grand River, and the bridge carries Wellington County Road 7 across the gorge.  This is the main road coming up from Guelph and continuing on north-westwards towards Grey and Bruce Counties.

Beyond that bridge, the succeeding two kilometres of the gorge are within the boundaries of the Elora Conservation Area, a parkland which includes day-use picnic areas, walking trails, and camping facilities which are limited in availability at present.  The Conservation Area is also a popular spot for tubing on the river.

For now, though, continue along the rim of the Irvine Creek gorge, and along the way you will see through the fence some striking examples of the trees clinging to the very edge of the gorge.  Since this forest was planted all at once after earlier land clearance in the first wave of pioneer settlement, it's plain that the edge of the gorge continues to erode and threaten the livelihood of these stubborn trees.

Close to Lover's Leap there is a stairway down through a steep cleft to the floor of the gorge.

Another marked lookout point allows a view up the Irvine Creek gorge to the elegant concrete arches of the David Street bridge, the key access to Elora from the west.  The trail continues north, even after leaving the park, and runs in a straight line behind the backyards of a number of homes right up to David Street.

In the ordinary way of things, at this point in time I would have been making a beeline to a point two kilometres or so upstream from the falls, to the Elora Quarry Conservation Area.  This quarry yielded a fair amount of the stone used in building this town, and likely also its neighbour of Fergus.  Once disused, it gradually filled with water and became one of the most famous swimming holes of southern Ontario.  With three parking lots, picnic tables, changing and washroom facilities, and a beautiful beach between the quarry pool and the Grand River, it's a destination guaranteed to fill up early on pretty much every day through the summer.  Sadly, the Conservation Authority has decided to leave it closed this year, presumably due to the difficulty of enforcing social distancing on the not-overly-large beach.  Here's an internet aerial photo showing the quarry, which I assume was taken with a drone.

At this point in my visit, I doubled back to the car, and instead of going to the quarry, I headed into town for a look at some of the historic buildings.  Nothing proves the strangeness of this visit quite so much as the ready availability of parking spots all up and down the main street.

Downtown Elora hosts an incredible assortment of boutiques of all kinds: clothing stores, jewellery stores, gift shops, food shops, toy shops -- you name it, it's here.  And then there are the restaurants, the cafes, the ice cream shops, and on and on.  Most amazing in this day and age, there's scarcely a single national brand or chain among them.  The real interest to me, though, is the fascinating mix of styles of architecture and methods of construction.

The main street's most eye-catching landmark is the lovingly-restored post office.

A small park next to the post office holds the simple, dignified cenotaph.

At the bottom of the hill, beside the river, are some particularly fine stone buildings, which originally housed the mills and associated storehouses.

The Elora Mill has been repurposed and transformed into a 4-star boutique country inn with a fine restaurant overlooking the river and the falls.

And everywhere in town, there are flowers.  In people's gardens, in parks, in numerous planter boxes along the streets, the colours are wonderful.  Among the very few people I saw out and about, there was a crew from the municipality going around with a water truck to water all the planters.  In fact, the best part of seeing Elora so quiet and devoid of activity was the way that all the flower displays were suddenly visible, not blocked from the eye by rows of parked cars.

Going up to Elora early in the morning, and on a weekday, certainly paid off for me!