Northern Canal looking towards downtown

Lowell Walks resumes tomorrow after taking last weekend off for the Lowell Folk Festival. The walk begins at 10 am at Lowell National Park Visitor Center. The topic is the Northern Canal Urban Renewal Project and it will be led by Chris Hayes and Aurora Erickson.

Completed in the late 1960s, the Northern Canal Urban Renewal Project demolished the Merrimack Manufacturing Company (Lowell’s first and largest mill complex) and the Little Canada neighborhood. Everything from Moody Street to the Merrimack River was leveled. The project was and is controversial, and its legacy continues to shape Lowell today.

Lowell Walks takes place regardless of the weather, so if there’s a threat of rain, just bring your umbrella.

Then, right after the walk, there will be a book launch for History as It Happens: Citizen Bloggers in Lowell, Mass., our new book that features the best writing and photographs from the first ten years (2007-2016) of the richardhowe.com blog.

The book launch event will go from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm at Lowell Telecommunications Corp at 246 Market Street (right next to Lowell National Park Visitor Center). The 500-page book, normally selling for $20, will be available for $10 at the book launch event. There’s no formal speaking program; just an opportunity to gather with many of the book’s contributors and to reminisce about some of the big local events from the past ten years.

If you can’t make it to the launch event, the book is available online from the Loom Press website.