Today, while wandering along beside the Thames, I came across a plaque, which said the following:
LIEUTENANT COLONEL JOHN BY, ROYAL ENGINEERS
FOUNDER OF OTTAWA, CAPITAL OF CANADA
John By was born near this place and baptised in the church of St. Mary-at-Lambeth, August 10, 1779. After a distinguished career in Canada and in the Peninsular War, he was called out of retirement in 1826 and sent to Canada to build the Rideau Canal waterway. A defence project, the waterway would extend 200 kilometres from the Ottawa River to Lake Ontario. It penetrated uncharted lakes and rivers, virgin forest, rock, and swamp attended by the horrors of introduced malaria. This outstanding engineering feat, which required the construction of 47 stone masonry locks and 23 dams, was opened May 30, 1832. Now a heritage treasure, it remains in use as a recreational waterway.
John By retired to Frant, East Sussex, where he died February 1, 1836.
Erected 1997 by The Historical Society of Ottawa.
You learn something new every day, if you keep your eyes open and your brain open.
A camera helps too. Photographs of where I was in London, and of the plaque itself, and further linkage, here.
Interesting.
Point of information: There is no such county as “East Sussex” and the administrative area known as “East Sussex” didn’t exist until 1888.
Aside from that, you surprised me. From the title I assumed you were going to refer to “A Canadian in Mayfair”, Wally Stott/Angela Morley’s musical tribute to Robert Farnon.
Very nice.
But where’s the information of Col. By’s founding Ottawa?
If I have the place right, just a hop and a skip along the Embankment from Colonel By’s memorial is the memorial to Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the 1860’s architect of the London sewer system. Not-a-lot-of-people-know that the Victoria Embankment is actually the upperworks of his northern lower-level interceptory sewer, as well as the Metropolitan Line of the Underground.
The Embankment and surrounding area is packed with such wonderful memorials, would that we had more time to stop and understand more about the works of those memorialized.
llater,
llamas
Ottawa was originally called Bytown after him, though there was already a small town on the site.
More interesting, though, is that By fiddled the finances when he was building the canal and so it proved to be quite a nice little earner for him. At least as far public infrastructure projects are concerned, his legacy lingers on.
A small bit of irony. While the canal was first built to help keep American military out, it is now maintained to bring in American tourists.