Peterborough, ON

The first thing you have to see in Peterborough is its massive lift lock on the Trent-Severn Waterway. It was the world’s highest lift locks at 20 meters when it was built in 1904. Back then, most lift locks only had a height of about 2 meters on average. It was also the first lock in the world to be built out of concrete and was the largest unreinforced concrete structure in the world at the time.

Peterborough is also home to a museum and archives as well as the Canadian Canoe Museum. I couldn’t find a reason to visit a museum on the history of canoes, but maybe you might. The Lang Pioneer Museum is a 20-minute drive away and uses a preserved village to tell stories of life in the 19th century.

The one museum I found extremely interesting is the Hutchison House. It was built in 1837 and the home of the city’s first doctor who was also a magistrate. It is said that locals volunteered to build this stone house for him to make him stay in Peterborough after he had practiced in Port Hope and Rice Lake. Needless to say, the city benefitted from having a doctor during the typhus outbreak of 1847 when the good doctor died as one of the victims after contracting typhus from a patient.

Two years before Dr. Hutchison died, Sir Sandford Fleming, his cousin, lived with him in the same house. He was a surveyor who made a map of Peterborough and met his wife while doing it. He became the Chief Engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway and invented standard time zones in Canada.

Both the city hall and county administrative offices are handsome limestone buildings built from material from around Lake Ontario. Presqu’ile Provincial Park sits on a limestone peninsula and Guelph is well-known for its limestone structures.