The Thames and the Ottawa

London is a much bigger and more historic city than Ottawa, as you can tell from its river.

Central London

This is the view I had from Hungerford Bridge (the new footbridge) as I crossed the busy Thames from the south bank to the Embankment underground station, with St. Paul's Cathedral on the skyline and barges going under Waterloo Bridge.

Maybe in another few hundred years, Ottawa will look as developed as this, too. At the moment, it's still a relatively quiet place.

Central Ottawa

Flotsam

It's a month later, almost, and I have been away in Britain, near the Rivers Taff and Thames. While I was with my grandsons in London I read them the Canadian classic children's story, Paddle to the Sea (1941) about the boy who carves a model canoe with a man in it, and lets it float where it will from north of Lake Superior to the Atlantic, travelling gradually seawards on the currents. The story traces all the adventures of the wooden man in his canoe.

I had another bike ride by the Ottawa River yesterday, east of town this time, but I didn't see any tiny wooden canoes in the water. I did see plenty of boats making the most of our "Indian" summer and a fallen tree that had been carried downstream by the current recently, not too much of a hazard to the boating traffic if it's spotted in time.