The old railway bridge

"Bytown was located within the township of
Nepean, just west of the Rideau River, whereas New Edinburgh was located in the township of Gloucester, just east of the Rideau River. It was only in 1887 that New Edinburgh was annexed to Ottawa."
[...]
"McKay [1792-1855] was quick to grasp the potential of railroads, and he played an important role in the construction of the Bytown and Prescott Railway. Its charter was granted in 1850, and the company’s president was John McKinnon, a son-in-law of McKay. This 52-mile rail link ran east of the Rideau River, from Prescott on the St. Lawrence River through Gloucester Township to McKay’s mills [at the Rideau Falls]. The first train arrived in New Edinburgh on Christmas Day, 1854. During the following spring, a bridge over the Rideau River was completed, so that trains could directly enter Bytown, which was now only two hours from Ogdensburg, New York, and less than 24 hours from Boston."

From A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF NEW EDINBURGH
By Robert Serré, President, Gloucester Historical Society

The remains of that "bridge over the Rideau," its stone supports, can still be seen near our house. Nowadays mallard ducks, mergansers, geese, herons and cormorants perch on these stones in the river, to preen themselves or look for fish. A plaque on the wall that once led to the bridge (visible in my photo) alludes to the history described above.

By car, because there's no opportunity to go by rail any more, it still takes a couple of hours at least to get from here to Ogdensburg or vice versa, depending on how much time you're held up by immigrations and customs at the border.

After rereading the above, I'm puzzled as to why the picture below was dated 1852, because this is surely a sketch of the bridge in question. Perhaps this picture was advance publicity for the bridge.

The Rideau Falls

When we first arrived in Ottawa from the UK I used to think that the ice floes tipping over the Rideau Falls looked like giant chunks of Kendal Mint Cake. We paused a while yesterday to watch some of this years' ice reach the lip of the Falls and splash down below. A group of people were doing the same on the opposite bank and shouting "Oh!" as the larger pieces hit the Ottawa River with a splash. Perhaps the sight was new to them; it's certainly dramatic. This year is the first time that I recall the bridge across the Falls being ribboned off: no public access. If you stand there watching the full spate of water, it makes you dizzy, and if there's a wind from the northwest, the spray blows up and wets you.

Rideau Falls, 1860 (no public safety measures, in those days!)

The hydro energy used to be harnessed by a series of mills (grist mill, wool mill, saw mill), built by Thomas MacKay, who first saw its potential in the 1820s. MacKay (sometimes spelled McKay) is also famous for having built the mansions Rideau Hall, eventually the official home of the Governor General, and Earnscliffe, now the British High Commissioner's Residence, overlooking the Ottawa River upstream from the Falls.

In our day there's a small hydro-electric station with two turbines beside the Falls which has been in service since 1908 and which generates 8542 MW of power per year.