Welland Canal

The Welland Canal is a ship canal in Ontario, Canada, connecting Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Traversing the Niagara Peninsula from Port Weller to Port Colborne, the canal forms a key section of the St. Lawrence Seaway, enabling ships to ascend and descend the Niagara Escarpment and bypass Niagara Falls.

Approximately 40,000,000 tonnes of cargo are carried through the Welland Canal annually by a traffic of about 3,000 ocean and Great Lakes vessels. This canal was a major factor in the growth of the city of Toronto. The original canal and its successors allowed goods from Great Lakes ports such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago, as well as heavily industrialized areas of the United States and Ontario, to be shipped to the port of Montreal or to Quebec City, where they were usually reloaded onto ocean-going vessels for international shipping.

By providing a relatively short and direct connection to Lake Erie, the Welland Canal eclipsed other, narrower canals in the region as a commercial traffic route for Great Lakes navigation, such as the Trent-Severn Waterway and, significantly, the Erie Canal, which linked the Atlantic and Lake Erie via New York City and Buffalo, New York.

Welland

Welland (2011 population 50,631) is a city in the Regional Municipality of Niagara in Southern Ontario, Canada.

The city is located in the centre of Niagara. Within a half hour or less, residents can travel to Niagara Falls, Niagara-On-The-Lake, St. Catharines, Port Colborne and Buffalo. It has been traditionally known as the place where rails and water meet, referring to the railways from Buffalo to Toronto and Southwestern Ontario, and the waterways of Welland Canal and Welland River, which played a great role in the city's development. The city is separated by the Welland River and Welland Canal which links Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

Welland is the home of C Company of The Lincoln and Welland Regiment which is part of 32 Canadian Brigade Group, the classification of this unit is Light Infantry.

Welland's nickname is The Rose City.

History

The city was first settled in 1788 by the United Empire Loyalists. On 19 October 1814, Canadian forces led by George Hay, 8th Marquess of Tweeddale, met an American raiding party, numbering approximately nine hundred, near the eastern edge of the present community during the Battle of Cook's Mills. After an intense skirmish, the Americans retreated to Buffalo, New York. Cook's Mills was the second to last engagement of the War of 1812 on Canadian soil.

Canal

Canals and navigations are human-made channels for water. In the vernacular both are referred to as 'canals'. The main difference between them is that a navigation parallels a river and shares its drainage basin, while a canal cuts across a drainage divide.

Types of artificial waterways

A navigation is a series of channels that run roughly parallel to the valley and stream bed of an unimproved river. A navigation always shares the drainage basin of the river. A vessel uses the calm parts of the river itself as well as improvements, traversing the same changes in height.

A true canal is a channel that cuts across a drainage divide, making a navigable channel connecting two different drainage basins.

Most commercially important canals of the first half of the 19th-century were a little of each, using rivers in long stretches, and divide crossing canals in others. This is true for many canals still in use.

Structures used in artificial waterways

Both navigations and canals use engineered structures to improve navigation:

Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls (/naɪˈæɡrə/, Cayuga: Gahnawehtaˀ or Tgahnawęhtaˀ) is the collective name for three waterfalls that straddle the international border between Canada and the United States; more specifically, between the province of Ontario and the state of New York. They form the southern end of the Niagara Gorge.

From largest to smallest, the three waterfalls are the Horseshoe Falls, the American Falls and the Bridal Veil Falls. The Horseshoe Falls lie mostly on the Canadian side and the American Falls entirely on the American side, separated by Goat Island. The smaller Bridal Veil Falls are also located on the American side, separated from the other waterfalls by Luna Island. The international boundary line was originally drawn through Horseshoe Falls in 1819, but the boundary has long been in dispute due to natural erosion and construction.

Located on the Niagara River, which drains Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, the combined falls form the highest flow rate of any waterfall in the world, with a vertical drop of more than 165 feet (50 m). Horseshoe Falls is the most powerful waterfall in North America, as measured by vertical height and also by flow rate. The falls are located 17 miles (27 km) north-northwest of Buffalo, New York and 75 miles (121 km) south-southeast of Toronto, between the twin cities of Niagara Falls, Ontario, and Niagara Falls, New York.

Stompin' Tom Connors

Charles Thomas "Stompin' Tom" Connors, OC (February 9, 1936 – March 6, 2013) was a Canadian country and folk singer-songwriter. Focusing his career exclusively on his native Canada, Connors is credited with writing more than 300 songs and has released four dozen albums, with total sales of nearly 4 million copies. Connors died at 77 in his home in Ballinafad, Ontario, of renal failure.

His songs have become part of the Canadian cultural landscape. Three of his best-known songs, Sudbury Saturday Night, Bud the Spud and The Hockey Song, are played at various games throughout the National Hockey League; the latter is played at every Toronto Maple Leafs home game.

Personal life

Early life

He was born Charles Thomas Connors in Saint John, New Brunswick to the teenaged Isabel Connors and her boyfriend Thomas Joseph Sullivan at midnight, February 9, 1936 at the General Hospital in Saint John, New Brunswick.

Isabel's family were Protestant, and his maternal grandfather, John Connors, was a sea captain from Boston, Massachusetts who had died before Stompin' Tom was born. Stompin' Tom's father was a Catholic of Irish and French ancestry, and "may have been Métis or ... Micmac." Isabel Connors and Thomas Joseph Sullivan didn't wed until 30 years later, probably because Sullivan's family were devout Catholics and didn't want him marrying a Protestant; they later divorced. Sullivan's mother gave him $10, and was told to leave home. Connors was also cousin of New Brunswick fiddling sensation, Ned Landry.