Ewen MacColl didn't do a Radio Ballad about the canals, but Jon Raven, John Kirkpatrick and others put together a neat recording called "The Bold Navigators", which intersperses songs and period narrative accounts about your canals in the UK. It was on Broadside Records originally as an LP, and has been re-released recently on CD, by Fellside, maybe? I highly recommend it. George Ward has made a recording of canal songs from the USA; it's fun to compare the two!