May 31, 2002 Ship Canal Planned for North Bay Area Came Close to Realization a Century Ago

For centuries, long before trucks, trains and planes, people and goods moved over water. To join bodies of water or get around rapids and other obstructions, and for a variety of other reasons, canals were built. Locks were often added in key locations, so boats could be raised or lowered to get the boat to a body of water at a different level. I grew up in Port Colborne on the Welland Canal, where my family worked directly or indirectly on the building and operation of the canal over the years. Across the U.S. border the Erie Canal in New York State was a well-known transportation route. The Rideau and Trent canals were critical to the opening of Ontario to commerce. The importance of the Suez and Panama canals is well-known. From the early 1800s there were several serious attempts to create a safer and more direct access route to Northern Ontario and to the west, to open these areas to people and business, and as a building block in the development of the Canadian national dream.

As early as 1819 the Royal Engineers worked on a plan to come up the Ottawa River and cut across what is now Algonquin Park through lakes, rivers and new canals, to get to the Great Lakes and further west primarily for military reasons. In the 1860s there was another flurry of activity when senior military officers took an exploratory trip through the Mattawa River, Lake Nipissing and French River route. Walter Shanly was subsequently directed to complete a survey of this route. It was completed in 1863, but for a variety of reasons was not acted upon (a copy of this report is available in the North Bay Public Library reference section). In those days, the Mattawa River was called the Matawan and Lake Nipissing, Nippisinque. Various other proposals were put forward with ever increasing canal widths, depths and costs.

Sketch showing the layout of the lock and canal through the heart of Mattawa. (From the Georgian Bay Ship Canal Estimate Plan, Department of Public Works.)

From the start there were great supporters and great opponents of the project, often with purely political motivation. People with a vested interest in Southern Ontario wanted the business there. Others argued that there was a lack of population in Northern Ontario or that the costs were prohibitive. Much money had been put into railways, and it was felt (especially by the owners) that this approach should be reinforced.

About a hundred years ago, the thrust for a canalization of the Mattawa River/Lake Nipissing/French River waterway came to a head, and the name Georgian Bay Ship Canal became the title of the project. Numerous presentations were made in parliament. A British company said they could build it if financing could be arranged. In 1904 Parliament authorized the Department of Public Works to carry out a new in depth engineering study of a canal system.

The 600 page Georgian Bay Ship Canal Estimate Plan was completed in 1909, and Robert Legget in his book The Ottawa Waterway states that it is "one of the finest engineering reports ever produced in the history of Canada; it can be read with pleasure and profit even today, for its thoroughness and readability are exemplary." It proposed a 22-ft wide canal system that could take 600-ft ships at a cost of a hundred million dollars, and would take ten years to build. There would be thirty miles of canals in the 460 mile route, and it would save 300 miles versus the Great Lakes route to Lake Huron (a copy of the report is available at the North Bay public library).

The impact on North Bay would have been incredible, with a canal from Trout Lake to Lake Nipissing over the high land there, through several small lakes, and containing a lock and dams. The canal would enter Lake Nipissing near Little Rocky Point, crossing Parson’s Street. A Railway terminal would be built to the north of the canal about where the A&P store is today, and a coal fired power plant to run the operation would be built near where the North Bay Mall is now. The raising of the water on Lake Nipissing to make the canal work would have had a disastrous effect on the shoreline, so there was an alternate water supply plan for the locks where the area from Trout Lake to Talon Lake would be flooded, with extra water being made available through a feeder canal from the Amable du Fond River.

Sketch of the section of the Georgian Bay Ship Canal, going from Trout Lake to Lake Nipissing, showing dams and the lock necessary to control the water. (From the Georgian Bay Ship Canal Estimate Plan, Department of Public Works.)

Anson Guard, in his 1909 book North Bay: The Gateway to Silverland, gave the North Bay Board of Trade credit for pushing the project, and talked about it as if it was a sure thing. In his concluding statement he said, "I am tempted to prophesy that in 1915, the 300^th anniversary of Champlain’s coming to Lake Nipissing will be celebrated at North Bay on the occasion of the completion of that part of the canal that will connect the town with Lake Huron."

In 1911, Liberal Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier promised to build the canal if re-elected. He lost, and with a pending war and tremendous railway debts, the new conservative government of Sir Robert Borden did not act on the report. Various delegations made presentations and a royal commission was established, but when a decision was made to build the new Welland Canal the commission never reported.

After the war, another issue arose to keep the canal concept alive—hydro power development, especially after Niagara Falls showed the potential of the harnessing of water with dams and generating power. Some forty-five dams were a part of the 1909 report. The arguments centered around whether power was a federal or provincial matter, and whether such developments would be government or privately run (sound familiar?). When the Charter for the proposed Georgian Bay canal came up for renewal in 1927 in the House of Commons, there was a lengthy debate that filled 400 pages of Hansard. The charter was not renewed and the project died. There were other rumblings, but the St. Lawrence Seaway project in the 1950s consolidated the Great Lake route and set the project further back.

In the 1960s the North Bay Chamber of Commerce put forward a proposal for a French River project that would allow boats to use that route. Less than a decade ago, a recreational waterway for smaller boats on the French River was proposed. None of these plans materialized. Leggett, mentioned above, notes in his book when discussing the 1909 study that it, " was a serious proposal that came within an inch of being undertaken." If it had, the Nipissing District— from Mattawa to Lake Huron—would be significantly different than it is today.