Landmarks in the valley of the old canal
Our old photo this week has several historical elements in it worth noting.
In the background it shows ongoing construction of the first Glenridge Bridge. Work was well underway on five of the arches supporting the south end of the bridge, while the north end was not yet so far advanced.
The structure towering over the south (right) end of the bridge — what looks very much like an oil derrick — was used in constructing the bridge. The amount of progress evident on the bridge dates the photo to sometime in 1914. The bridge opened on Nov. 28 of that year.
In the middle distance we see Lock 3 of the second Welland Canal, the “old canal.”
That canal had already been replaced since 1881 by the third Welland Canal, which bypassed downtown St. Catharines entirely.
By the time this photo was taken, the traffic on this part of the old canal would only have served customers in the city centre with deliveries of raw materials and the dispatch of their products to customers elsewhere. There was no longer any through traffic on this section of the old canal.
Notable also are those two tall, thin towers standing on either side of Lock 3.
At the time they were built, in 1906, they were reputed to be the tallest free-standing concrete poles in the world. They were the work of J. L. Weller, an engineer who, by the time this photo was taken, had become the supervising engineer on the fourth Welland Canal (the ship canal), then being built east of the city.
Weller was an expert in building with concrete, knowledge he applied both to building those two poles and also to constructing the concrete locks of the ship canal. Those poles raised the hydro lines coming from the DeCew Falls hydro facility into downtown St. Catharines high enough not to be snagged by the masts of ships passing through the old canal.
The small footbridge in the foreground used to take the canal’s old towpath across Twelve Mile Creek, which at that point flowed in from the right to merge with the old canal.
In those days, before the flow of water through DeCew Falls Hydro was much increased during and after the Second World War, the creek was much narrower than it is today.
Looking at the old canal valley from a similar spot today, it’s hard to fathom that it’s the same scene.
The original Roman aqueductstyle Glenridge Bridge was demolished in 1955 after it showed imminent signs of collapse. For the next quarter century traffic crossed the valley via an earthen berm, known as “The Fill.”
Today’s Glenridge Bridge was opened in December 1980, spanning the newly opened Highway
406.
Over the past century Lock 3 was slowly forgotten, buried in the 1950s when the downtown section of the old canal began to be covered over. But it’s still there today, half of it buried under today’s Merritt Trail, the other half under Highway 406.
Engineer Weller’s two tall concrete poles were removed in
1971.