What to do with a lock after the canal closes
Lock 4 area has been used for various purposes since 1929
The 26 locks of the third Welland Canal were rendered obsolete when the new Welland Ship Canal opened for traffic in 1930. Ships would no longer pass through their gates, the water that made them work would be drained out, and they’d be filled with earth, disappearing from view, and eventually forgotten.
Lock 4 of the third canal was located about midway between Ontario Street and Linwell Road in far northwest St. Catharines, a short distance south of Lakeport Road.
The last ship passed through Lock 4 at the end of the shipping season in 1929.
Aerial photos of St. Catharines taken five years later show the lock and the adjacent stretch of the canal channel filled with water, still a visible part of the landscape.
By the 1940s the canal itself had been drained, but the lock was still there, being used for gunnery practice during the Second World War, suggesting that the huge, empty lock chamber resounded with the sound of pistols
— even artillery pieces? — during that period of national emergency.
That arrangement was something that you could get away with in those days.
Lock 4 was well away from any significant residential settlement, at a time when St. Catharines’ northern city limit was Carlton Street. There were few people living close enough to be annoyed by the sounds of gunfire coming from the lock.
Similarly, when the first of a series of concrete manufacturers set up shop in old Lock 4 starting in the later 1940s, their activities
were initially not a matter of concern. (Our old photo this week shows activity in old Lock 4 ca. 1979.)
Initially there were very few people living nearby to be annoyed by the noise and dust associated with the concrete production in the lock and the constant coming and going of trucks taking the newly mixed concrete to construction sites across the city.
But that changed as the city spread northward from the old city limits toward the shores of Lake Ontario.
The industrial activities were particularly annoying to the residents of the Sheridan Park subdivision that eventually was established immediately north of the Lock 4 concrete plant and the industrial mall that developed adjacent to it.
After years of complaints by nearby residents, and attempts by the city to remedy the situation, the last of the concrete manufacturers closed in December 1981.
Over the next 15 years the adjacent industrial mall faded away, leaving the site, including the abandoned canal lock, vacant by the late 1990s.
In 1997 an American firm proposed building a $12-million, 127-unit seniors residence on the vacant site, to include “extensive landscaping and relics of the city’s shipping heritage.” Result: the Anchor Pointe complex, 540 Ontario St., opened in September 1999.
Our today photo shows the extensive green lawn behind Anchor Pointe, with just the tops of the stone walls of Lock 4 visible above the lawn’s surface.