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(from Anglo-Celtic Roots, Volume 5, No 4, 1999)
Lt.Col John By is honoured by The Historical Society of Ottawa as the builder of the Rideau Canal and as the founder of Ottawa. He laid out the first streets of the town which was then called Bytown. We have two very good biographies of Col. By; one by Dr. Robert Leggat written in 1982 and a more extensive one by Mark Andrews published in 1998. No one has been able to find the personal papers of Col. By and it is presumed they were destroyed following his death.
John By was the son of George and Mary By, baptised in the church of St. Mary at Lambeth, London on 10 August 1779. His father was a Thames waterman -- a job which apparently included looking after customs duties -- he was "Chief Searcher" in the London Customs House. It appears that his father had died before 1794 and at the age of 14 his mother apprenticed John to follow in his father's footsteps and become a waterman. However, he did not continue in that trade but in 1797 was admitted as a Gentleman Cadet in the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. It has been suggested his mother Mary By, following the death of her husband, had obtained a position in the Royal household and was thus able to obtain her son's entrance to the Woolwich Academy.
John By was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery on 1 August 1799. After some additional training he was transferred to the Royal Engineers. Only those at the top of the class were given that opportunity. His first posting was to Plymouth as an officer of 6 Company, Royal Sappers and Miners employed in improving the fortifications of Plymouth.
It was at Plymouth that he married Elizabeth Johnson Baines on 12 November 1801, the daughter of Captain Cuthbert Baines, RN. The following year he was sent to Canada, arriving in Quebec in August 1802. There is no record that his wife accompanied him. However, she died in 1814 of cholera at the age of 34.
In Quebec, John By was employed constructing canals on the St. Lawrence river at Soulanges and at the Cascades at Montreal. He was promoted Second Captain on 2 March 1805 and to full Captain on 24 June 1809. In addition to his work on canal building, with the help of a skilled surveyor and draftsman J.B. Duberger, he built a scale model of Quebec city including the Plains of Abraham. In November 1810 he requested leave to return to England and he took with him the model in 18 large crates for use in planning new fortifications for Quebec.
In February 1811 he was posted to Wellington's Army in Portugal fighting against Napoleon's Army. It is known that he was one of the RE officers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Fletcher at the first siege of Badajos and also the second siege of that fort.
On 1 January 1812, he was appointed Officer in Charge of the Ordnance Establishment at Waltham Abbey just north of London. There he had to develop and increase the manufacture of gunpowder. A new factory was built to manufacture gun barrels. He was promoted to Major on 23 June 1814. With the victory at Waterloo against Napoleon in 1815, the need for armaments was reduced and on 21 January 1818, the factory was placed on a reserve basis and the workers discharged. Major By was placed on the retired list in August 1821.
Shortly after his promotion to Major in December 1814, his first wife died. She was buried at Cheshunt close to Waltham Abbey. He married again on 14 March 1818 to Esther March with the consent of her guardians. Esther had fallen heir to a fortune from her father. John By was 38 and she was 20 years old. With his retirement from the army, and following the marriage, John By and his wife purchased a property called Shernfold Park on the edge of the village of Frant in East Sussex. They had two daughters - Esther March born in early 1819 and Harriet in 1821. John By became a successful farmer, but kept in touch with the Royal Engineers and on 2 December 1824 he was promoted Lieutenant Colonel while on the retired list. In March 1826 he returned to active duty and was ordered to Canada to build the Rideau Canal.
The idea of building the Rideau Canal as a defence project had been suggested several times after the war of 1812 and rough surveys had been done in 1815. Nothing was done until the Duke of Richmond arrived in August 1818 to take over as Governor in Chief. He recommended the building of the Rideau Canal and in the meantime he had canals built at the rapids on the Ottawa River between Montreal and Chaudière by the Royal Staff Corps.
Col. By and the Governor, Earl Dalhousie, chose Entrance Valley as the site for the first locks of the canal on 26 September 1826. There he constructed the magnificent flight of eight locks that can still be seen at the junction with the Ottawa River.
The most difficult dam was at the Hog's Back. The contractor gave up and By employed members of the Royal Corps of Sappers and Miners who worked all winter but failed to realize the clay they used contained frozen water which, in the spring thawed, causing the dam to leak. By rushed to see the damage and narrowly missed being swept away when the dam failed. The dam was subsequently rebuilt and like all of Col. By's works is standing to this day. Another great engineering achievement was the arch dam at Jones Falls on the Cataraqui River where By took the unprecedented course of building a 60 foot high dam to close off the 90 foot gorge through which the river tumbled with a drop of 60 feet. This dam was unique in that instead of relying on its weight for its stability the forces were transmitted to the bed rock on either side.
Col. By had as many as 2,000 men working on the canal at any one time and naturally there were injuries and fatalities, the latter caused by falls and blasting but mostly by the dreaded "swamp fever" as it was called, Malaria as we would call it today, was indigenous to the area, especially in the swamps, of which there were many. Col. By himself became a victim.
The accusation by the Board of Ordnance that Col. By had overspent his budget in the building of the Canal was caused by statements made by a young man named Burgess. Burgess had been a clerk at the start of the works, however, he took to drink and was discharged in March 1830. He took copies of Col. By's letters, reproduced them and accused him of falsification, using public funds for private work and other misdemeanours. He addressed vicious appeals to the Board of Ordnance and a Court of Inquiry was held in Bytown in November 1831. Burgess did not appear and other witnesses gave evidence in favour of Col. By. By was exonerated but the damage had been done and he could only retire to his farm in the village of Frant.
Getting back to his arrival in Wrightsville, the Governor instructed him to lay out the first streets of a town which became known as Bytown. Those streets were Rideau and Wellington streets and Sappers Bridge over the canal joined them. Lots were surveyed for housing and businesses. Col. By built his house in what is now called Major's Hill Park. Barracks for the troops and a hospital were built on what is now Parliament Hill. His Commissariat building is now the Bytown Museum and on the other side of the canal was built officers' quarters.
On 13 March 1832 Col. By was in Kingston and there he bought 600 acres for £1,200 from a Mrs. Grace MacQueen. It was scrub land in what is now downtown Ottawa from Laurier Avenue to Gladstone Avenue and from Bronson Avenue to the Rideau river. He never returned to Bytown to develop his land and it lay vacant for a number of years. Eventually it became the property of his nephew and was finally developed for him by lawyers in Bytown.
He suffered a stroke in October 1834 and died in his home in Frant on 1 February 1836. Today we have a statue of Colonel By in Major's Hill Park erected by the Historical Society of Ottawa in 1971.
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