The Welland Canal, early days to 1930

This article is adapted from The Canadian Geographic Journal Vol. II, No. 1, January 1930; minor changes have been made to the text, mostly formatting, and some images are not reproduced.  Authorship is credited to G.W. Yates.^{[Note 1]} – Ed.

The first Welland Canal of 100 years ago did not extend across the entire Niagara Peninsula. It was designed to convey small craft from Lake Ontario to Port Robinson, about half way, and thence, by way of the Welland and Niagara rivers, to Lake Erie. The project was promoted by public-spirited citizens whose vision and enterprise are worthy of consideration, as, a century later, the gigantic successor to the first Welland Canal is about to be placed in operation. Upper Canada’s great handicap in the earlier decades of the 19th century was lack of convenient access to Canadian ocean ports. It was, of course, before the advent of the railway. The waterways were supreme. The Erie Canal had been completed in 1825 and had already commenced to draw the growing traffic of the upper lakes to the port of New York by way of the Hudson River, thus setting in motion, and very largely fixing, a current of trade of which United States railways were destined later to reap enduring advantage.

In Canada, advocates of the improvement of the more direct St. Lawrence had been given a setback by the selection of the circuitous Rideau route by the Imperial authorities for military and strategic reasons. Excessive freight charges were adding greatly ~ to the cost of living, and were retarding the opening up and settlement of the country, and more particularly the western sections of the Province. Nowadays, when a ton of grain may be carried all the way from Fort William to Montreal for $3, one can understand the position of the early settlers when it is stated that a hundred years ago it cost $16 to transport a ton of freight from Montreal to Prescott, and an additional $8 from Prescott to Niagara, and at Niagara there was an ever present barrier to marine communication with the upper lakes. These were some of the considerations which led to the construction of the first Welland Canal and to the subsequent improvement of the St. Lawrence.

The opening of the first Welland Canal was celebrated on November 30th, 1829, by the passage, upbound, of two vessels, the “Ann and Jane" and the “R.H. Boughton”, one British and the other American, one 85 tons burthen, and the other smaller. The inauguration of the project was a gala event in local history and, appropriately enough, the ceremony took place on the fifth anniversary of the breaking of ground. It was one of the few bright spots in the history of the undertaking, so far as the private promoters were concerned. As to the project itself, the swift current of the Niagara River soon forced the abandonment of the original scheme and the canal was afterwards extended across country to Gravelly Bay, afterwards Port Colborne, on Lake Erie, and completed in May, 1833.

The promoters of the enterprise experienced financial difficulties and, as has since happened in other lines of transportation, the Government became interested in the venture through loans and advances secured by stock holdings and, in 1839, an Act authorized the purchase of all stock held by private individuals. This was accomplished after the union of Upper and Lower Canada in 1841, and the Government thus came into possession of a 714-foot navigation between the two lakes provided by locks eight feet in depth.

It was then decided to replace the wooden locks of the original structure with locks of cut-stone of the same dimensions as those of the Cornwall canal then under construction and, by 1848, this had been accomplished. The number of locks were reduced from 40 to 27, while the dimensions had expanded from 110 to 150 feet in length, and from 22 to 26% feet in width, with eight-foot locks giving place to nine feet three inches and later to 10 feet, by the addition of copings and the raising of the banks. This work was completed in 1867.

In 1871, on the recommendation of the Canal Commission, a uniform scale of navigation was adopted for the St. Lawrence and Welland canals, with locks 270 feet long, 45 feet wide and 12 feet deep. It was considered advisable to improve the location from Allanburg to Port Dalhousie at this time, and a new route was, therefore, selected to the east of the original line, making it possible to avoid the circuitous course of the first canal through the ravine around St. Catharines. Contracts were let in 1875 and the canal opened to 12-foot navigation in 1882. At the same time, the work of deepening to 14 feet was in progress This was accomplished by raising the banks and the lock walls and the canal became available for 14-foot navigation from the commencement of the season of 1887.

The development of the larger tvpe of vessels, attracted by the expanding ore and grain trade of the upper lakes, very shortly rendered obsolete even the new and enlarged canal, really the third navigation work constructed across the Niagara Peninsula. To meet the situation presented by this upper lakes expansion, and with a view also to the ultimate development of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence route to the sea, surveys were commenced, in 1908, for the ship canal. The surveys were completed in 1912 and the work placed under contract from the Lake Ontario end, without any ceremony whatever, in September, 1913.

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At that time, it was expected that the work would be completed in about five years, at an estimated cost of $50,000,000. That it has taken 17 years to complete at a cost of $120,000,000 is no reflection upon those who planned the work. The outbreak of war in August, 1914, found the job half under contract, and under war conditions all pre-war estimates were speedily rendered meaningless. Following the outbreak of hostilities no additional contracts were entered into, but as long as money and labour conditions permitted, work was prosecuted upon the sections which had been placed under contract. By January, 1917, however, the war had made it impossible to continue, and work was suspended and, later, by agreement, the contracts were cancelled, the Government, for the most part, taking over the contractors’ plants.

After the Armistice, the Government adopted the policy of proceeding with necessary public works in order to meet unemployment conditions created by the closing down of war industries, and the return of soldiers from overseas, and it was decided, in December, 1918, to resume construction work on those sections of the canal which had formerly been under contract. Under changing conditions prevailing in the reconstruction period following the war, it was quite impossible to estimate the cost of completing the works. Accordingly, cost-plus agreements were made with former contractors to resume work. ‘These agreements were extended from year to year, until, in February, 1921, a decision was reached to return as soon as possible to the contract basis, conditions at that time being sufficiently stable to make it possible for contractors to make intelligent estimates of costs extending over several years. The work already in hand was, therefore, again let to contract, but at post-war prices, and, as rapidly as possible, the remainder of the project was also placed under construction. This explanation of the delay and greatly enhanced cost of the work is given in some detail because of the tendency to cite the construction of the Welland Ship Canal as an instance of the unreliability of engineering estimates as applied to other proposals of a somewhat similar nature, now in the public eye.

The total lift of the Welland Ship Canal is 326½ feet, which represents the difference in elevation between the ordinary levels of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. The total length of the Ship Canal will be 25 miles, or 27.7 miles between the outermost ends of Port Weller and Port Colborne harbours, and, for all practical purposes of navigation, the canal presents a straight line throughout. There are 26 locks on the present Welland Canal. This number will be reduced to seven on the new canal, or eight if the guard-lock is taken into account. Of those eight locks, the three ascending the escarpment are twin locks in flight, by means of which vessels may be passed up at the same time as other vessels are being passed down. These double locks are similar to the Gatun locks of the Panama Canal which, though of somewhat larger dimensions, have an aggregate lift of only 85 feet. As the lift of the Welland Ship Canal locks is 46½ feet, the three combined escarpment lifts total 139½ feet. The usable length of the locks is 820 feet, and the usable width 80 feet, with 30 feet of water on the sills. The width of the canal prism, at bottom, is 200 feet and, at the water line, 310 feet. While a portion of the canal has been excavated to 27 feet, the minimum navigable depth is 25 feet. The provision of 30-foot depths on the sills will make it possible at any future time to secure 30-foot navigation throughout by dredging the reaches. The lock walls are 82 feet above the top of the gate sills and, including the necessary foundation work required below this level, two of the locks have walls 100 feet high. The valves and culverts in the walls are of large dimensions and will permit a lock to be filled in less than eight minutes. The time required to pass a vessel through one of the Ship Canal locks will be about 20 minutes, and the estimated time to pass a loaded freight vessel through the entire canal is eight hours, as against from 15 to 18 hours on the present canal When traffic is heavy, or becomes congested for any reason, several vessels of present canal size could be accommodated at one lockage. A remarkable construction feature has been the siphoning of Chippawa Creek under the canal, a work of much difficulty in view of the necessity of avoiding interference with the operation of the present Welland Canal. As the canal traverses a well settled and highly industrialized community, it has been necessary to provide no less than 20 bridges to take care of railway and highway traffic. Some of the difficulties and dangers of the work may be gathered from the fact that its prosecution has taken a toll of no less than 111 lives.

In the spring of 1930 the new canal was placed in operation at both entrances, and for most of the navigation season there was a partial and combined operation of the old and the new works. Towards the end of the season the entire new canal was in use throughout at 18 feet draught. Date of official opening is now set for July 1, 1931, and, in anticipation of the advent of the larger upper lake vessels, there has been much preparatory activity at Lake Ontario and upper St. Lawrence ports on both sides of the boundary.

In 1928, when there was a record crop and a normal movement of grain, traffic on the Welland Canal established a new maximum of 7,439,617 tons and, on the St. Lawrence canals, 8,411,542 tons. The corresponding figures for 1929, a year of .small ‘crop and delayed movement, were 4,769,866 and 5,718,651. These figures have to do with all commodities. In 1928, the movement of wheat alone through the Welland amounted to 3,945,950 tons and, through the St. Lawrence canals, 3,836,921. There are 3314 bushels to the ton. Under 1929 conditions, these figures decreased to 1,684,545 and 1,600,582 tons respectively. It is curious to recall that, in 1830, the export of wheat via the St. Lawrence amounted to 280,322 bushels or 8,409 tons.

As a commentary on the development in transportation during the intervening century, it is interesting to note that a hundred years ago the freight rate on wheat from Prescott to Montreal was 9d. or 18c. per bushel. To-day, the average normal rate from Fort William to Montreal is about nine cents per bushel, of which about three cents represents the bulk carrying charges, upper lakes to Port Colborne, and six cents the handling, by smaller vessel, from Port Colborne to Montreal.

Notwithstanding the growth in lake commerce, there are 141 fewer vessels plying the upper lakes to-day, than at the opening of the present century. The explanation is that the average tonnage of upper lake freighters is now three times what it was 30 years ago. The great tally point on our inland waterways is provided by the United States and Canadian locks at Sault Ste. Marie, which do three times the business of either the Panama or Suez canals. Records of vessels passing the Sault indicate that, in 1904, the first vessels of more than 500 feet in length appeared, and it was not until 1907 that 600 feet was exceeded by these mammoth freighters. The shrinkage in small vessels and the growth of the bigger boats in upper lake service since the commencement of the century is strikingly shown in the following analysis of the dimensions of vessels passed through the Sault canals:

In 1900 there were only five freighters plying the upper lakes with maximum cargo capacities exceeding 10,000 tons. By 1903, 12,000 tons capacity had been reached; by 1904, 14,000 tons capacity, and in 1913, cargo capacities commenced to exceed 14,000 tons. During 1929, 61 cargoes in excess of 14,000 tons were passed through the Soo canals. In 1900, 25,643,073 tons of freight, valued at $267,041,959, with freight charges amounting to $24,953,314, were carried through the canals at Sault Ste. Marie in vessels valued at $69,735,159. By 1929, the ‘total freight carried had increased to 92,622,017 tons, its valuation to $1,000,327,459, the freight charges to $80,267,506, while the combined values of the United States, Canadian and foreign craft engaged in the work had mounted to $256,175,631.

This tremendous development in upper lake commerce and the limiting dimensions of former Welland and St. Lawrence canals have placed the waterway below Lake Erie at a great disadvantage over a long period of years, and all grain destined for export via the St. Lawrence that has reached the Welland Canal in the larger boats has had to be transferred to smaller vessels for movement to Montreal. It was with a view to at least the partial removal of this great handicap that the Welland Ship Canal was conceived. Its complete removal must, of course, await the deepwater development of the St. Lawrence between Lake Ontario and Montreal, which will undoubtedly be the next step in the realization of the lakes to ocean waterway, of which the Welland Ship Canal forms an essential part, a fact not always remembered when delays and difficulties incident to the St. Lawrence section of the project are under discussion. The Welland Ship Canal really constitutes a $120,000,000 contribution to the through scheme, and Canada will be entitled to consider it as such in the eventual reckoning. In the prosecution of the work, knowledge and experience have been gained by engineers and contractors alike which should be invaluable when the time comes, as before long it will come, for the prosecution of the larger enterprise.

[ Back ] Note 1: George W. Yates, Assistant Deputy Minister of Railways and Canals, was a journalist in London Ontario, later going to the “Toronto Globe.’ Leaving journalism, he entered the Ontario provincial service as a private secretary. On the appointment of Hon. Frank Cochrane as Minister of Railways and Canals. Mr. Yates accompanied him to Ottawa as private secretary. From 1917 to 1920 he was private secretary to Sir Robert Borden during the period af Union Government. On the retirement of the Prime Minister he returned to the Department of Railways and Canals, to take up the position which he held at the time of this article (1929).