Doug Cornelius .com

Brian Mardirosian used his red kayak to commute using the Charles River, traveling from West Roxbury to Beacon Hill. Mardirosian started out on the Charles River at 5:30 a.m. on June 26 near Marie Louise Kehoe Park and Bridge Street and he arrived at work at around 11 a.m.

He documented the journey with a waterproof camera, which automatically took pictures every 30 seconds. He mashed those stills together to create the video below.

You will see the Hemlock Gorge paddling trip portion of the route starting at 1:30, Echo Bridge at 2:00 and ending in Newton Lower Falls at 3:00. Someday I will paddle the rest of the Charles River.

From the story: West Roxbury man kayaks to work on the Charles River by Carol Lawless for Wicked Local Roslindale

The Boston Public Library has posted a collection of Newton post cards using Flickr. Several of the pictures show how the Charles River used to look in its run through Newton.

This looks like the dam at Upper Falls (the Silk Mill Dam):

You can compare this to my recent picture of the dam at Upper Falls from my paddling trip through Hemlock Gorge:

It was interesting to see what the area around Horseshoe Dam looked like prior to the construction of Route 9, as seen in this picture: