Ontario

Canal History

Ontario has the greatest number of canals and waterways of all the Canadian provinces. (see the full list below in the Canal Index Pages section.) The reason for the number of canals is due in large part because of Ontario’s location around the Great Lakes. Most of these are considered to be navigations which are improved rivers and lakes connected by short sections of man-made canals. Ontario often found itself in competition with New York as the two built and enlarged canals and navigations over the years.

The waterways of Ontario taken from the Inland Waterways of North America by David Edwards-May.

The 126-mile-long Rideau Canal is actually a series of lakes and rivers connected by short sections of canal, or by building locks and dams in the river channel. The Rideau Canal was constructed in 1832 as a response to New York’s Erie Canal and the possibility of a new war with the United States. It was to be a military transport route connecting Ottawa on the Ottawa River, to Kingston on Lake Ontario. By using this route, shipments could bypass the St. Lawrence River route which served as the dividing line between the two countries. The Rideau is a World Heritage Site. The canal is notable as it retains its hand operated locks and bridges.

Like the Rideau, the 240-mile-long Trent-Severn Waterway is a series of connected lakes and rivers that spans between Trenton on Lake Ontario to Port Severn on Georgian Bay, Lake Huron. Construction began in 1833 but was not complete until 1920. Although it was designed to be a route into the interior for commercial shipping, by the time the waterway was completed, the locks were too small for the Great Lakes ships. The system is now used only for recreational traffic. The waterway has two unique lift-locks where the boats enter a caisson, the end of the caisson is closed and hydraulic rams lift or lower the tub of water and boats to the next level. The lift-lock at Peterborough has a 65 foot lift. The lift-lock at Kirkfield has a lift of 48.8 feet. The other notable machine on the waterway is the Big Chute Marine Railway which is located near the western end of the system. Although lift-locks and marine railways are somewhat common along European waterways, the Trent-Severn is the only waterway in North America where these can be found. A map of the Trent-Severn Locks can be found here.

The 27-mile-long Welland Canal is a man-made waterway that connects Lake Ontario at Port Weller to Lake Erie at Port Colborne, allowing ships to bypass Niagara Falls by climbing over the Niagara Escarpment. When it was first opened in 1829, it came into competition with the Erie Canal in New York and served similar sized vessels, except that the Welland was designed for sailing ships where the Erie was designed for animal powered barges. Barges in the Erie could use the Welland by leaving the Erie at Syracuse and heading north to Lake Ontario at Oswego. Steamships would then tow the boats to the Welland. Boats still use this route today to bypass the winding, shallow and low head-room Erie Canal route west of Syracuse. The Welland has gone through four enlargements to keep up with the increasing size of Great Lake shipping. Many of the early generation locks remain intact where the canal took a winding route over the escarpment. The canal is a working waterway and the locks are not open to the public. Viewing areas can be found at locks 3, 7 and 8.

Canal Groups and Organizations

Rideau Canal National Historic Site. The Rideau is operated by Parks Canada.

Trent-Severn Waterway National Historic Site. The Trent-Severn is operated by Parks Canada.

Major Repositories and Archives

This Google Docs spreadsheet contains a listing of all the Canadian Canals.

Canal Index Pages

The “canal index” project is an on-going project of the ACS to document canal sites. Most of the information is from the 1970-1990 time period, however new pages are being added. Feel free to contribute to this project by submitting a form.

Note: Canals in blue and underlined have index sheets which are accessible by double clicking on the hyperlink.  The others do not yet have index sheets.  They are listed here to make the list more complete.  It is intended to add index sheets for them in the future.

Please note that many of these are the actual pages done in the early 1970s.  Changes have occurred since and there are some inaccuracies in the information on the pages.