From Queenston to Kingston. Ron Brown
saw military service off and on until 1872, when it was finally abandoned. Today the ruins have been stabilized by Parks Canada. A trail leads through the golf course, marked by historic interpretive plaques. Its rival across the river, Fort Niagara, can be clearly seen from the parapets, though the only missiles hurled at it today are those of the golfers.
Twelve Mile Creek: Port Dalhousie
Before rail lines breached the peninsula, two main routes led from Niagara to Ancaster and the head of the lake. The more popular followed the old raised beaches at the foot of the Niagara Escarpment, left behind by the receding waters of Lake Iroquois. This alignment was higher and drier, allowing easier travel by stage or foot. Another route followed the shore of the lake itself.
Although shorter, it was more difficult, as the many river and creek mouths to be crossed proved time-consuming. But this crude trail led to the naming of those same waterways. Quite simply, the rivers were named based on the distance they were from the mouth of the Niagara River. A short distance from Niagara, Four Mile Creek was the site of an early mill operation.
The first of the Loyalists to arrive at the mouth of Twelve Mile Creek were Peter Broeck and Lieutenant Benjamin Pawling. In 1821, Pawling founded a town site he called Dalhousie, for then governor general, the Earl of Dalhousie. The site also attracted William Hamilton Merritt, who saw the potential for an all-Canadian canal to link Lake Ontario with the upper lakes. The completion of the Erie Canal linking New York with Lake Erie led Canadians to see the need for an all-Canadian route from the Atlantic seaboard to their ports on Lakes Erie and Huron, as well as those on the upper lakes.
But the high cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment posed an engineering nightmare. The first thought was to dig a canal along Twelve Mile Creek to the base of the huge cliff, and from there drag the boats up by means of an incline railway. But Merritt convinced the government that the best route lay in a canal that mounted the escarpment by a series of locks, and then connected with the Welland River, thence to the Niagara River at Chippewa.
In 1824, the canal’s president, George Keefer, turned the sod at Allanburg, and on November 30, 1829, the first two schooners sailed through the canal and into the Niagara River. Because there was insufficient water in the watershed to operate the canal effectively, more was needed, and a feeder canal was opened to Port Maitland to draw the water from the Grand River. However, because of the strong currents on the Niagara River and the shallow draft of the feeder canal, a third channel had to be dug, this one directly from Port Robinson to Port Colborne, right on Lake Erie.
But with forty locks, and ships increasing in size, the first Welland Canal was soon obsolete. A second was started. Completed in 1851, it followed the same route as the first, but the number of locks was reduced to twenty-seven, they were lengthened and deepened, and most wooden locks were replaced with stone ones. The success of the canal brought a boom to St. Catharines, but a decline for places like Niagara and Queenston. New towns sprang into existence along the route, such as Port Robinson at the old junction of the first canal and the Welland River, and Port Colborne and Port Dalhousie as the Lake Erie and Lake Ontario termini respectively.
The Thorold and Port Dalhousie Railway rolled into town in 1853, building its facilities on the east side of the harbour. This line later became part of the Welland Railway and then the Grand Trunk. The east side of the harbour was nicknamed the “Michigan Side” due to the annual winter migration of the tow boys — men who guided the horses that towed the sailboats through the canal to the lumber camps of that state. Even today the beach is known as Michigan Beach.
By 1866, the Muir brothers were operating a permanent dry dock at the north end of Martindale Pond, a business which survived for nearly a century. But many of the new locks remained inadequate, and so between 1873 and 1887 they were doubled in size, while a more direct route between Port Dalhousie and Allanburg was excavated. By 1907, it was evident that this one, too, was outdated, and yet a fourth canal was begun. Interrupted by the war, the new waterway opened in 1932. Now constructed of concrete, the locks were reduced to a mere seven, with a new Lake Ontario entrance at Port Weller. It is this canal (with another bypass at Welland opened in 1972) that today accommodates some of the world’s largest lake and ocean freighters.
The success of the canal meant both boom and bust for Port Dalhousie. With the opening of the first canal, the mouth of Twelve Mile Creek became an overnight bonanza town, with a string of bars and taverns lining the lock side. Sailors, longshoremen, and tow boys all crowded into the smoky nighteries, often tumbling out onto the streets and filling the night air with the sounds of drunken brawling. It was little wonder then that in 1845 a small stone jail was built close by. Guests were invited to share two cramped cells and, if they became cold, would be allowed to stoke the fire in the single wood-burning stove.
When the swamp at the mouth of Twelve Mile Creek was filled in, a recreational park was opened, attracting tourists from Hamilton and Toronto. As early as 1884, the paddlewheel steamer Empress of India began carrying visitors to the park. In 1902, the Niagara, St. Catharines and Toronto Railway took over operations, with the ships Northumberland and Dalhousie City plying between the park and Toronto.
In 1903, Martindale Pond, originally a part of the first two canals, became the site of the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta. A branch of the Welland Railway ended at a station on the east side of the canal, while streetcars from the Niagara, St. Catharines and Toronto Railway also brought fun-seekers to the beach. Prohibition did not put a serious damper on the port’s nightlife. Despite the restrictions of the Ontario Temperance Act, beer managed to make its way to the town on boats from Quebec. The park continued to expand, with rides, a water slide, a dance pavilion, and, in 1921, the arrival of a merry-go-round from Hanlan’s Point in Toronto. The pavilion featured dance bands such as the Andy Spinosa Band. By the 1930s, nearly three hundred thousand visitors were arriving by boat each year, and radio station CKTB was regularly broadcasting lacrosse games from the park.
The relocation of the canal entrance to Port Weller had brought a slump in the economy of the port, and the years following the Second World War hurt the park, which, along with the boats, was being operated by the Canada Steamship Company (CSC). Steamers continued to call until a deadly fire on the Noronic in Toronto Harbour in 1949 tightened safety standards for the lake-passenger ships. The cross-lake traffic died out, and Canadian National (CN), then owner of the CSC, decided to get out of the amusement park business altogether. In 1969 the park was closed and the rides sold; only the carousel and dance hall remained (the dance hall burned in 1974).
Port Dalhousie’s historic carousel is the sole survivor of the site’s days as an amusement park.
With considerable foresight, the St. Catharines council bought the property and, in 1978, declared the carousel a heritage site. By then the Queen Elizabeth Highway between Toronto and Fort Erie was bringing a new wave of tourists. St. Catharines’ urban growth soon engulfed the port, and it gained new life as both a popular summer playground and an historic lakeside attraction. Today, sleek yachts crowd into the harbour and beery laughter fills the bars and patios on the warm summer nights.
Despite the urban growth around it, Port Dalhousie remains a heritage treasure trove. For starters, two historic locks remain. Lock number one from the second canal is part of a park on Lakeport Road, the main street along the canal, while lock number one from the third canal lies farther east on Lakeport Road where a lock master’s shanty has also been preserved.
Several of the early hotels still stand on the portside streets, including the Port Mansion at 12 Lakeport Road, built in 1860, and the Non-Such Hotel, built in 1862, located at 26 Lakeport Road. Near the corner of Lock and Main streets are the Lakeside Hotel, built in the 1890s as the Austin House, and the Lion Tavern, dating from 1877 and originally known as the Wellington House.
The little stone jail also survives, just around the corner from the drinking establishments — but today it belongs to one of them. The lockup is considered to be the second smallest establishment of its