Following the historic St. Lawrence River in a 2021 Dodge Durango R/T

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Those who travel often between Kingston and Montreal will be all too familiar with Highway 401. Every tree, every rock wall, and every soulless highway rest stop becomes committed to memory over time, familiar yet droning like a saccharine pop song stuck on repeat.

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The antidote to this monotony lies just a few kilometres to the south. The shore of the St. Lawrence River is home to immense history, culture, and postcard-perfect scenery. All it takes to discover this is a little more time — from a few minutes to hours or days, depending on your ambitions and how long you can spare — and a desire to slow down and explore the places where life is truly lived.

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Following the historic St. Lawrence River in a 2021 Dodge Durango R/T Back to video

My daughter and I dedicated the better part of a week to learning more about this waterway and the critical role it’s played in Canada’s history, camping our way across its shore while visiting parks, fortifications, and attractions in a 2021 Dodge Durango R/T towing a 10-foot trailer.

2021 Dodge Durango R/T

Here’s a look at the vehicle that guided us through our week, the 2021 Dodge Durango R/T. With the Tow ‘n Go Group and numerous other options, this example rings up at $81,635 after a $1,895 destination charge.

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We quickly learned that towing with an SUV brings some serious advantages. Having second-row captain’s chairs and a centre console with flexible storage space makes it much easier to organize snacks, drinks, and entertainment for younger passengers. There’s also much more interior storage space overall, which saved me when an issue came up with our trailer: we had one key with us that locks all of the exterior doors, and it broke off in a lock early in our trip. I had to leave the trailer unlocked at a campground and pile our valuables into the Durango before heading into town for the day’s activities, which it fortunately managed with room to spare. Granted, the test pick-ups supplied to the media don’t typically have tonneau covers installed, which would have helped. Still, there’s something to be said for tall, clean, secure, accessible, and weatherproof storage space.

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However, for our situation, the Durango’s shortfall is that it’s just a lot more truck than we truly needed. The 5.7-litre Hemi V8 makes 360 horsepower and 390 lb-ft of torque, plus the Tow ‘n Go package adds a Class IV hitch receiver, trailer brake controller, four- and seven-pin wiring harnesses, an upgraded 4×4 system, an electronic limited-slip differential, a performance suspension with adaptive damping, and a towing drive mode that adjusts the transmission response, plus more. Apart from the essential towing hardware, most of this is far beyond what’s required for this little 1,606-pound trailer. Because the truck is optimized for much heavier trailers, our fuel use average was on the high side at 20.2 L/100 km over 1,200 km of driving, which is two to three litres per 100 km more than what I’d typically expect.

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Drivers with much larger and heavier trailers would get a lot of benefit from everything the Durango can do. But for us, it was an enjoyable but expensive and high-emissions week. With most mid-size SUVs and minivans having a maximum tow rating of 3,500 pounds, full-size pick-ups or large SUVs don’t need to be the towing default. This got me thinking very hard about choosing more appropriately matched towing vehicles for this trailer going forward.

Kingston, a settler city with history

Our journey begins in the same city where Canada did. Kingston briefly served as the capital of the United Province of Canada in the 1840s, and at that point it had already long been established as a trade and military outpost.

Naturally, that means there’s plenty of history here to explore. Today, it’s complemented by a bustling downtown area with unique shops and a very cool food and entertainment scene.

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There are a couple of ways to learn about the city in more detail. The Kingston Trolley is a more traditional route: this thorough one-hour tour takes visitors past city hall, the famed Kingston Penitentiary, Queen’s University, Fort Henry and the Royal Military College, and several other key locations.

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Bellevue House is one of the trolley’s destinations, based just west of downtown Kingston. This is preserved as a national historic site because it was once the home of Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, though his family only lived here for 13 months. The house is closed for renovations, but the grounds can be accessed for free in the meantime. In response to the horrific confirmations made at Canada’s residential schools in recent months, Parks Canada has modified the programming here to present Macdonald’s career alongside more objective discussion of his role in establishing residential schools, among other issues. It’s a small but important step in ensuring Canada’s history is retold with honesty.

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It’s poetic in a sense that this is just steps away from the Gord Downie Pier, a relatively recent addition to Kingston’s waterfront installed in honour of the Tragically Hip frontman and Kingston native, who died of glioblastoma in 2017. One of Downie’s final works was to shed light on the horrors of residential schools. Having these two sites within blocks of one another provides an opportunity for reflection and cements Kingston’s ongoing position as an epicentre of Canadian thought and cultural leadership.

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The other method for exploring Kingston’s downtown is much more playful. Improbable Escapes is home to traditional escape rooms, but its team has developed some outdoor games during the pandemic that are part mystery, part walking tour. Our chosen experience took us through the shopping district, waterfront, and a secret alleyway with art displays and tucked-away restaurants. My daughter and I have never had so much fun exploring a city’s downtown.

Fort Henry is another can’t-miss destination in Kingston, and for good reason: its position at the meeting point of Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, and the Rideau Canal gave it critical strategic importance in the early 1800s. This is one of Canada’s best-kept examples of a British fortification, and it’s the only fort in Canada that houses its own official civilian guard responsible for the site’s historic interpretation and re-enactments. In just a couple of hours on a weekday, we toured the fort’s two levels and witnessed artillery and music demonstrations. A visit here is key to understanding Kingston’s military history, which today remains a major part of the city’s fabric.

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Kingston also marked the starting point for our chosen cruise through the Thousand Islands. There are actually 1,864 islands in this archipelago, which begins here at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and carries through to Brockville 85 kilometres to the east. Numerous cruises are offered along this stretch, but the three-hour Heart of the Islands lunch cruise out of Kingston turns the tour into a fabulous experience with a three-course meal, bar service, and live entertainment to accompany the spectacular views.

Too many people from the Greater Toronto Area drive east and stop at Prince Edward County for its beaches and wineries. Consider continuing east and giving Kingston a shot. It’s a beautiful city, and you won’t be disappointed.

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Gananoque and Thousand Islands National Park

Carrying on along Highway 2 east of Fort Henry means delving deeper into the Thousand Islands, including the town of Gananoque and Thousand Islands National Park.

My daughter and I are avid collectors in Parks Canada’s Xplorers program; we have somewhere around 70 medals now from sites across the country. But I have a rule about national parks: we can’t just drive through and claim a medal. We need to do something that helps us appreciate what the park is about.

Thousand Islands National Park includes three sectors on the mainland and 20 of the archipelago’s islands. To me, that means seeing the park equates to spending time on one of those islands. And boy, did we ever find a cool way to do that: after taking part in a three-hour afternoon kayaking tour with 1000 Islands Kayaking in Gananoque, we loaded up a rental double kayak and paddled out to McDonald Island to camp there overnight.

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The original plan was to bring a tent and stay at a traditional campsite. But when Ontario moved to stage 3 of reopening, the park’s oTENTik permanent camping structures opened up as well. The oTENTiks on McDonald Island require a little more preparation than most: we had to bring our own cooking and serving tools and drinking water on top of food and sundries, but not having to bring a tent and mattresses saved space and time. After dark, the early August fireflies turned the island’s walking paths into a starry sky in motion, and we fell asleep to the sounds of waves lapping on the shore and loons calling in the distance. This was the first paddle-in experience together for my daughter and me, and though it took work to achieve, it was pure magic from top to bottom.

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However, we focus on driving here at Driving.ca, which means I’m obligated to offer a word of warning: Gananoque and many of the other towns on this stretch are wonderful to visit, but they’re not so fun for driving or parking — especially if you need to stay overnight, and double that again if you’re towing a trailer. I was sent to park at the arena across town and take a five-minute cab ride back to the kayaking headquarters; doing this again on the return trip took more than an hour longer than I expected. It’s manageable, but be sure to plan ahead.

At any rate, the drive across the Thousand Islands Parkway is a beautiful side trip any time you have a half-hour to spare, even if you can’t stop along the way. We took it to get to the park’s visitor centre in Mallorytown Landing to complete the Xplorers activities and pick up our medal, which now commemorates one of our most memorable travel experiences yet.

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Brockville, from water to land

Where the islands cease and the river narrows, Brockville stands guard. It’s easy to assume there’s not much to this city when zipping past the endless stream of chain restaurants on the 401, but the picturesque downtown holds its share of treasures.

Key among them is the Brockville Railway Tunnel, the first one built in Canada. I’d been told this is a must-see and thought, how great can an old railway tunnel be? It can be pretty darned great, it turns out: the tunnel dates back to 1860, and in the decades since has collected fascinating mineral deposits from the groundwater that sifts through its bricks and blasted rock. The town has fitted the tunnel’s entire length with ongoing light and music displays that run throughout the day and evening. It’s completely free to visit and worth going out of the way to see.

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Younger kids will also enjoy a trip to Brockville’s Aquatarium, a small aquarium that highlights local marine history and conservation. This is home to numerous species from the surrounding region, from fish and reptiles to river otters and Justin Beaver (named after another Canadian star — get it?). The friendly staff run demonstrations throughout the day, including Justin’s daily walk past visitors in the hallway to get to his overnight pen.

Prescott, guardian of Upper Canada

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A few minutes drive to Brockville’s east takes you to Prescott, home of Fort Wellington National Historic Site. This is another of the sites along the river that formed the British line of defence of Upper Canada, but this one is different from most in that it actually saw combat during the War of 1812 and the Upper Canada Rebellion. The latter involved a conflict known as the Battle of the Windmill, which is also commemorated at another national historic site a couple of minutes down the road.

The fort is open for self-guided tours, its Xplorers program is running, and the blockhouse is open displaying artifacts from an archaeological dig conducted in the 1990s — in the latrine, of all places. The site is small but well-preserved as it stood during the rebellion in 1838, more than 180 years ago.

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Iroquois to Cornwall, progress amid the lost villages

The next major landmark to the east is the Iroquois lock. This forms part of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which officially opened in 1959 and creates a route for massive commercial ships to get from Lake Erie to the Atlantic Ocean. There’s a snack bar and a group of benches positioned above the lock, and you can wait there to see if you luck into seeing an ocean liner pass through.

But if you stop there, you miss the most important parts of the story.

The next hint of the history hidden along this stretch is at Upper Canada Village, a fully functioning reproduction of a British loyalist village as it would have operated in the early 1860s. Not only are most of the site’s buildings from the surrounding area and true to the period, but the Gazette newspaper office prints all of the village’s papers and posters, and items like bread, cheese, and wool blankets produced on site are sold at the gift shop.

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Continuing eastbound along Highway 2, parks and campgrounds appear that are maintained by the Parks of the St. Lawrence, the same provincial entity that’s also responsible for Fort Henry and Upper Canada Village. The names seem unassuming enough: first Farran Park, then the Long Sault Parkway, a 10-kilometre drive that links 11 islands in the St. Lawrence together like pearls on a necklace. Some count the parkway among Ontario’s most scenic drives, and the islands it connects are maintained as parkland and campgrounds with names like Woodlands and Milles Roches.

These names are far from accidental. Each of these islands marks a former hilltop within a 40,000-acre section of land that was flooded to create the St. Lawrence Seaway, which now holds a reservoir between the dam in Iroquois and the power generating station in Cornwall. Land was lost on both sides of the border: in the U.S. it was mostly farmland, but in Canada, the residents of six villages and three hamlets were relocated away from the area to be flooded. The original sites of those villages now lie beneath the water that surrounds the islands of the Long Sault Parkway.

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The Lost Villages Museum at Ault Park, just east of Long Sault, is home to several buildings relocated from the villages along with archives and displays. A self-guided tour is readily available, but the best way to experience the site is to visit on every second weekend during the summer when guided tours are led by Jim Brownell, the president of the Lost Villages Historical Society. Mr. Brownell is a former MPP and a formidable speaker, and he lived in the villages as a child during the relocation.

Mr. Brownell’s stories about his experiences being moved from his home in the name of “progress” are absolutely priceless, and this tour is well worth planning a weekend around if you can. His explanations brought this portion of our trip full circle: the church from his home village of Moulinette is currently being preserved at Upper Canada Village. By the time you leave the museum, the signs you see while flying past on the 401 — Wales Drive, Aultsville Road, Dickinson Drive — will suddenly carry far more meaning tied to the history this area’s locals are working so hard to preserve.

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Coteau-du-Lac, a final outpost

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Originally, this trip was to end at the terminus of Highway 2, just to the east of Cornwall. But with traffic once again flowing across the Quebec border and restrictions eased, the itinerary would be incomplete without a visit to Coteau-du-Lac National Historic Site.

This site sits 20 kilometres to the east of the Ontario-Quebec border and is home to another British fortification from the War of 1812, plus a great deal more: it shows the evolution of shipping transportation, from an 18th-century rigolet dug out by the French to the excavated ruins of a late 18th century boat lock built by the British, which is one of the oldest examples in North America. The blockhouse on the site is a replica of the one built by the British for the War of 1812, which they burned down during the rebellion under fear of occupation.

This is a small but beautiful and kid-friendly site on a wide set of rapids, and it perfectly encapsulates a journey through the rich and diverse history of this westerly section of the St. Lawrence.