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Mr. Merritt’s Ditch A Welland Canals Album by Roberta M Styran & Robert R Taylor
Mr. Merritts Ditch A Welland Canals Album by Roberta M Styran & Robert R Taylor
Soft Cover
152 pages
Copyright 1992
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements and Abbreviationsvi
Map of the Welland Canalsvii
Introduction 9
Chapter 1: Niagara Before the Welland Canal20
Chapter 2: Merritt's Crazy Crotchet32
Chapter 3: Milling and Manufacturing 40
Chapter 4: Trade and Commerce52
Chapter 5: Advertising and Promotion 62
Chapter 6: Communities: Initial Stimulus74
Chapter 7: Communities: Changing Fortunes 88
Chapter 8: Creating Employment98
Chapter 9: People and Pleasures110
Chapter 10: Difficulties and Disasters120
Chapter 11: Changing the Landscape130
Chapter 12: The Heritage Canals140
Glossary146
Index150
INTRODUCTION "The Welland Canal (1824-29) was initiated by local businessmen to stimulate local and regional trade. By the 1840s the canal's importance to the economy of British North America was recognized by government takeover of the privately owned Welland Canal Company in order to finance the urgently needed rebuilding. The locks and channel were enlarged (Second Canal, 1842-45) to accommodate the increasing size of ships. Following Confederation (1867) and the opening of the Canadian West, the waterway was seen as a vital link in a crucial artery of North American trade, and was once again rebuilt and enlarged (Third Canal, 1874-87). By 1913 the ever-larger ships from around the world necessitated yet another reconstruction (Fourth Canal, 1913- 32 ). These are the bare facts. The history of the Welland Canal is actually a saga of men, money, machines, misery, and daring flights of technological imagination."
So we wrote in The Welland Canals: The Growth of Mr. Merritt's Ditch (1988) [ p13]. In the course of our research for that volume we located far more material than could be included. Moreover, some themes introduced in the earlier book cried out for further development and new themes had come to mind. Thus was born the idea of this companion volume.
One continuing theme which now has been given a major focus is the contrast between romance and reality. In our first book we tried to picture both and pointed out some of the pitfalls of accepting the "romantic" view without careful thought. Since the romantic attitude to landscape (in which the beauty and grandeur of nature overwhelmed puny mankind) was a feature of late 18th and early 19th century art in both Europe and North America, it is scarcely surprising that those who portrayed the early Welland Canal saw it in that light [Int. 1]. Because artists working with pencil, oils or watercolours sometimes produced distorted (or contradictory) views of the canals, we occasionally found it difficult to decide just how the waterway and its surroundings actually looked [Int. 2].
Int. 1: Welland Vale, St. Catharines, 1882 (opposite top): This charming view of an area near Lock 2 of the Second Canal is typical of the late 19th-century "romantic" view of the world. Artists' renderings often presented picturesque, bucolic scenes wherein the canal seemed to meander like a lazy stream in a Homer Watson painting, more a gently flowing river than a man-made channel vitally important to the economies of Canada and the United States. - Picturesque Canada
Int. 2: Welland Vale, St. Catharines, ca. 1890 (opposite bottom): The artist, employed to portray various civic, industrial and commercial establishments for a "bird's eye" map of St. Catharines, presents a more realistic view of this important Second Canal area than that shown in Fig. Int.1. Here is a bustling, smoky - and presumably noisy - scene. Note that the bridge in the lower right corner here appears in the centre background of Int. 1. Even here, however, we cannot be sure that this is an accurate depiction. - St. Catharines Centennial Library
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