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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Information ID: #60123 Medium The Rideau Canal from military route to recreational waterway

Read the following passage.

A. The Rideau Canal grew out of the War of 1812. That conflict showed how easily the St. Lawrence River route between Montreal and Kingston could be cut, because much of the river's southern shore was in American possession. After the war, surveys traced a safer line: up the Ottawa River to the mouth of the Rideau River, then south through a series of small lakes to the Cataraqui River, which empties into Lake Ontario at Kingston. British authorities had little enthusiasm for the expense, but the Duke of Wellington supported the plan, and Lieutenant-Colonel John By of the Royal Engineers was appointed to carry it out.

B. By arrived in 1826 and set up his headquarters where the Rideau and Ottawa rivers meet, and a settlement known as Bytown grew up; it was renamed Ottawa in 1855. He persuaded his superiors to approve larger locks that could take the new steamboats, and his slackwater design joined lakes and rivers with dams and locks. Each year as many as 5,000 workers, most of them French Canadians or Irish immigrants, laboured mainly with hand tools. Hundreds died, many of malaria caught in the swamps along the route. The canal, 202 kilometres long, opened in the summer of 1832.

C. The final bill shocked the British Parliament, which recalled By to face an inquiry. He was cleared of mismanagement but never received the honours his work deserved, and he died in 1836. Meanwhile, the canal became a busy commercial artery from Montreal to the Great Lakes, carrying goods such as timber and potash. Its heyday was short: by 1849 the St. Lawrence rapids had been tamed by locks, and shippers moved to that more direct route. After the First World War, commercial traffic almost disappeared, and only the high cost of taking the system apart saved it from abandonment.

D. A new role had begun even before the trade ended. From the 1880s, excursion steamers such as the Rideau King and the Rideau Queen carried sightseers, and by the late 19th century hotels and private cottages stood beside the canal. Parks Canada acquired the waterway in 1972 to keep it running for recreation. Except for three hydraulic locks, the locks are still operated by staff cranking hand winches, and in winter the canal through Ottawa becomes a well-known skating rink. It was declared a national historic site about a century after work began, and in 2007 it was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

E. Not given in any of the above paragraphs.

Decide which paragraph, A to D, has the information given in each statement below. Select E if the information is not given in any of the paragraphs.

 - 1. Apart from a small number, the canal's locks continue to be worked by human muscle, not machines.

 - 2. Fewer workers died building the Rideau than on other canals of the same period.

 - 3. The canal was added to a list kept by UNESCO early in the twenty-first century.

 - 4. Many of the labourers were people who had moved from Ireland.

 - 5. Illness picked up in wet, marshy ground killed a large number of the men.

 - 6. Although officials worried about the price, backing from Wellington let the project go ahead.

 - 7. People can skate on the frozen canal in Ottawa for roughly two months each year.

 - 8. Much of the canal's trade was lost once a more direct water route was made easier to navigate.

 - 9. The canal survived mainly because removing it would have cost too much.

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