The Cornwall Rowing Club recently hosted a two-day rowing tour that visited historical sites of The Lost Villages along the way. After the success of their inaugural one-day tour last year, the club decided to extend the tour an extra day in 2023.
This year’s tour had 16 participants from across Ontario, including Toronto and Oshawa as well as members of the Ottawa New Edinburgh Rowing Club.
The tour started out on the Saturday from the fishing boat launch at Guindon Park, right around where Mille Roches used to be.
“We rowed towards Long Sault, and we went under the causeway into what I would call the inner waterway of the Long Sault Parkway,” explained Cornwall Rowing Club President, Kevin Donnelly, “We showed all of the participants where Moulinette was and Highway 2 as it emerges from the water at one point and then sinks in at another point. In the middle of the Parkway, we stopped where the submerged village of Wales was located. The water is pretty shallow there, so we got out and walked around the foundations of the egg-grading station and grist mill.”
In addition to experiencing our local scenery and history, participants also got to try out some local cuisine with stops at Sol De Acapulco in Ingleside for lunch and Au Vieux Duluth in Cornwall for supper.
The second leg of the tour began on Sunday on the other side of Long Sault Parkway. The plan was to go from Ingleside to Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg but due to smoke from forest fires the tour stopped at the Upper Canada Migratory Bird Sanctuary Campground before turning back.
The Cornwall Rowing Club was founded in 2019 and until last year was primarily based out of Guindon Park on city-owned land. In 2022, the City of Cornwall provided the club with access to a dock on the Cornwall Canal off Powerdam Road and Second Street. Allowing the club to launch from both locations makes rowing more accessible to Cornwall club members and gives the club access to better conditions for flatwater rowing. The Cornwall Rowing Club has boats for all rowing disciplines (flatwater, tour, and ocean rowing).
