Welland Canal

The Welland Canal is a ship canal in Ontario, Canada, that forms part of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes Waterway. It crosses the Niagara Peninsula, connecting Port Weller on Lake Ontario to Port Colborne on Lake Erie. The canal was necessary because the Niagara River, the only natural link between the two lakes, is blocked by Niagara Falls. It allows vessels to climb or descend the Niagara Escarpment, and over time it has taken four different paths.

Roughly 3,000 ships use the canal each year, carrying about 40 million tonnes (88 billion pounds) of cargo. The canal played a major role in Toronto’s growth. It enabled goods from Great Lakes ports like Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago, along with other industrial areas in the United States and Ontario, to reach Montreal or Quebec City, where they were typically transferred to ocean-going ships for international trade.

The canal first opened on November 30, 1829, and has been rebuilt many times to handle larger vessels and speed up travel. The First Welland Canal was dug from 1824 to 1829 and operated until 1845. The Second Welland Canal, built between 1841 and 1845, used stone locks instead of wood and was wider and deeper; it stayed in use for nearly a century before closing in 1935. The Third Welland Canal, constructed from 1872 to 1877, was even deeper and wider, cut a straighter route through the escarpment, and had 26 masonry locks lined with wood to protect ships; it operated alongside the second canal and also closed in 1935. The Fourth Welland Canal, still in use, began construction in 1913 but was delayed by World War I and finished in 1932. It is deeper and wider than the third, with an opening that allows two large ships to pass in opposite directions, and it reduced the number of locks to eight, compared to the first canal’s 40.

The Welland Canal surpassed narrower regional canals, like the Trent-Severn Waterway and the Erie Canal (which connected the Atlantic to Lake Erie via New York City and Buffalo), by offering a shorter, more direct route from Port Colborne on Lake Erie to Port Weller on Lake Ontario.

The southern end of the canal on Lake Erie sits 99.5 metres (326 feet) higher than the northern end on Lake Ontario. The canal has eight ship locks, each 24.4 metres (80 feet) wide. Seven of these (Locks 1–7, the “Lift” locks) are 233.5 metres (766 feet) long and raise or lower ships by 13 to 15 metres (43 to 49 feet) each. The southernmost lock (Lock 8, the “Guard” or “Control” lock) is 349.9 metres (1,148 feet) long.

The Garden City Skyway crosses over the canal, limiting the height of ship masts to 35.5 metres (116 feet). All other highway or railroad crossings are either movable bridges (vertical lift or bascule types) or tunnels. The maximum ship length allowed is 225.5 metres (740 feet). It takes about eleven hours on average for a ship to travel through the canal.

**History**

Before the canal was built, shipping between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie relied on a portage road between Chippawa, Ontario, and Queenston, Ontario, both on the Niagara River—above and below the falls.

**First Welland Canal**

The Welland Canal Company was incorporated by the Province of Upper Canada in 1824, following a petition from nine “freeholders of the District of Niagara.” One petitioner was William Hamilton Merritt, who partly wanted a steady water supply for his water-powered industries along Twelve Mile Creek in Thorold. Construction began at Allanburg, Ontario, on November 30, at a spot now marked on the west end of Bridge No. 11 (formerly Highway 20). The canal opened for a trial run on November 30, 1829. After a brief ceremony at Lock One in Port Dalhousie, the schooner *Anne & Jane* (also called *Annie & Jane* in some texts) made the first trip, heading upbound to Buffalo, New York, with Merritt on deck.

The first canal ran from Port Dalhousie on Lake Ontario south along Twelve Mile Creek to St. Catharines. From there it wound up the Niagara Escarpment through Merritton to Thorold, then continued south via Allanburg to Port Robinson on the Welland River. Ships then went east (downstream) on the Welland River to Chippawa, at the south (upper) end of the old portage road, where they turned sharply right into the Niagara River to head upstream toward Lake Erie. Originally, the section between Allanburg and Port Robinson was planned as a tunnel, but the sandy soil made that impossible, so a deep open-cut canal was dug instead.

A southern extension from Port Robinson opened in 1833, with the founding of Port Colborne. This extension followed the Welland River south to Welland (then called the settlement of Aqueduct, after the wooden aqueduct that carried the canal over the river there), then split to run south to Port Colborne on Lake Erie. A feeder canal ran southwest from Welland to another point on Lake Erie, just west of Rock Point Provincial Park in Port Maitland. With this extension, the canal stretched 44 km (27 miles) between the two lakes, using 40 wooden locks. The smallest lock was 33.5 by 6.7 metres (110 by 22 feet), and the minimum canal depth was 2.4 metres (7.9 feet). Deterioration of the wooden locks and the growing size of ships soon led to demand for the Second Welland Canal, which used cut stone locks.