redirect error

I have wordpress installed in a subdirectory of the root. I have followed the instructions provided to put index.php in root and create appropriate htaccess file. Site is up and running. Can access as expected from all sources except one.

The site was previously an html static site with default.htm as the home. I have found that in instances where the link to the old site was http://www.kayakbc.ca/default.htm , if followed it takes me to the ‘not found’ page. No problem, added redirect for /default.htm to http://kayakbc.ca/ . It ends up in a redirect loop. Tried all sorts of changes to this basic redirect code and get no good results. I think the bug is coming from the suggested htaccess code of

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Have searched high and low and cannot come up with a solution. I even put a default.htm file back in root with a redirect to index.php and got stuck in the same redirect loop.

Any clues would be much appreciated. Thanks, Steve