(Been out of touch from all but smoke signals for the last two days, Just found a public wharf with a half decent cell phone signal, catching up from here)
Short trip today, stopped before Lock 9 to get locking pass and mooring pass for the Chambly, Ottawa and Rideau systems in preparation for continuation of our downward steps to the St. Lawrence and Montreal.
Docked on a free wall in St. Jean sur Richleau, very pleasant little town with a French flavor. Quite a few good restaurants (a review tomorrow perhaps).
A pleasant enough waterfront..
Some very well kept houses..
And a few well kept cars….
A lurking very low bridge..
luckily a swing.
Some lock gubbins
Canal, River, Church, ascending to heaven maybe.
And as the First Mate said (Jokingly?)
“Take me now!”
Boadicea's Chariot 
Howzit LW
Do they swing the bridge just for you or do you have to wait for something of more importance to come up / down the river? Is there a cost?
The lock gubbins looks like something out of a 1960s sci-fi movie 🙂
Hi LW,
On the french canals the vast majority of locks have lock keepers, although they are introducing some automatic ones. What is the system over there?
Blimey! You found something free in Canada?
Must have been a monstrous oversight!!
Love the anal front garden.
Hello Soutie: Yes the small canal bridges open just for one boat, sometimes they have restrictions at busy road times but usually they are cooperative. They also phone ahead or coordinate with the locks if they are close so when the lock opens the bridge opens. lt’s all pretty well organized. Most of the lock controls seem to be pre-electronic age. Same in the British locks from what I observed.
JHL: They are all manned by lock keepers here, usually three to a lock, I’m sure the canal operation makes money, the charges are not trivial, many of the lock staff are female and working their summer vacations.
None are self service, I really don’t think that would work here, they feel it necessary to hand you a mooring line and tell you NOT to cleat if you are about to go down. Cannot imagine the chaos if people were left to their own devices.