Rideau Canal canoe trip inspires new album from Kate Weekes, regional musicians

Rideau Roots, the newest album by Smiths Falls folk musician Kate Weekes released on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025 was born out of a musical residency organized by Weekes in May of 2022. A collection of musicians and artists with a connection to the Rideau Canal paddled the canal from Kingston to Ottawa, combining canoeing with making music. Weekes, now living in Chelsea, Quebec, lived in the Yukon for 12 years as a canoe and hiking guide. She was looking for a way to combine her love for canoeing and music.

“I had, for a number of years, been daydreaming about initiating this kind of a project that would see people spending time on the land, on the water, outside in nature, and also having an artistic practice,” says Weekes. “I’d thought that that would be something I would do up north, but when the pandemic hit, I ended up closer to home.”

Weekes had originally planned to canoe the length of the Rideau Canal solo, a river she had grown up on, but never actually paddled. However, as the lockdown restrictions started to lift, she realized she could invite other artists to come along. In the end, nine artists came along for the residency, including Nathan Smith, Moonfruits, Christine Graves, Stephen Fuller, b!WILDer, Christophe Elie, and Kingston artists Arden Rogalsky and Piner.

As well as creating music together, the residency was an opportunity for settler artists to learn about the colonial impact of the canal in the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and the Huron-Wendat.

“I became acutely aware of how limited my perspective was on the canal and the land that we were going to be travelling through. I was embarrassed and a bit horrified to realize how settler-oriented my outlook has been,” Weekes expresses.

“One of the things that happened was we connected with Chuck Commanda, who is an Algonquin canoe builder who uses canoe building to teach about Algonquin traditions. We ended up having a Zoom meeting with him as a group in advance of the trip, to learn from him.”

Weekes explains how this journey was compared to many of the other canoe trips she has taken. Having paddled mostly in remote parts of northern and western Canada, paddling along the Rideau was very urban.

“My paddling experiences have had more of a First Nations presence, so that contrast was really highlighted as we were travelling through areas that were all private land ownership along the shoreline. It really impacted the flow of our days, because you couldn’t just pull over anywhere, because it’s someone’s house or property,” says Weekes.

“It’s just a different way of travelling through a space when you feel like you can’t stop. This land is owned by someone, so it changes the way we’re interacting with it.”

Weekes explains that her journey on the Rideau was also different from her other canoe trips because of the connection she had with her fellow paddlers, which didn’t end when the trip ended.

“When we finished the trip, it really wasn’t an end in the way that it would be when I was up North. We’d finish this once-in-a-lifetime trip, and everybody would fly home across the country. In this case, we finished the trip, and most people lived a short drive away, and we all still are living close to the Rideau, which is the point of this group,” she says.

“It made me realize that for all of us, it wasn’t a finite experience, but it was the start of a relationship in the same way that my exploration of my colonial heritage and trying to move beyond that is just a start. One of the bigger takeaways from the experience is that there’s a lot of potential for continuing to explore these ideas and having a relationship with the Rideau moving forward.”

In January of 2023, Weekes took some of the musical ideas that were born out of the trip on the Rideau Canal to make her album Rideau Roots. It was recorded in Stove Studios in Chelsea, Quebec, and was produced by multi-instrumentalist James Stephens, who has collaborated with Weekes many times.

Weekes will be touring her album at spots along the Rideau Canal from Saturday, Nov. 1 to Sunday, Nov.16, 2025, with different groups of her fellow paddlers at each of the shows. On Sunday, Nov. 2, 2025, she’ll be in Kingston at 2 p.m. at the Broom Factory. There, she’ll be joined by fellow paddlers Alan Weekes, Nathan Smith, and Piner. She’ll also be joined by Kingston resident Lisa Cadue from Tyendinaga and Akwesasne Territory to offer a Haudenosaunee perspective on the land and water.

For more information on the musical residency, or to buy tickets to the upcoming tour visit Weekes’ website here.