| If you have ever boated along the St Laurence Seaway near
Kingston, you will note that there is a fairly large island just
opposite Kingston. It is called Wolfe Island.
Kingston... Wolfe Island. Sounds pretty English to you?
Back in the 1600s, The Count of Frontenac, or as he was officially
named, Louis de Buade, Compte de Frontenac et de Palluau, then the
Governor General of New France gave the area of Kingston, including
Wolfe Island, to a French hat maker named Rene-Robert Cavalier de La
Salle for no other reason that La Salle expressed an interest in the
area and Frontenac and La Salle were close buddies. However La
Salle had an ulterior motive. He owed everybody and his dog
money that he did not have, so he sold off Wolfe Island to cover his
debts.
For a few hundred years following La Salle, Wolfe Island was
considered and good place to live for a hearty few and great place
for fishing and fishing by the natives and the locals. But in
about 1850, with the new fangled transportation known as railway,
was heating up, the St Lawrence was considered to an ideal conduit
to connect Canada and the US by boat. Trains from the US would
dump their goods on the dock in Cape Vincent, New York. The
goods would then be moved by ship to Kingston and put back in a
train to be distributed across Canada. There was only one
problem, according to the transportation guys. Wolfe Island
was a great place to visit but it got in the way of commerce.
What to do? What to do?
Well you can't move
and island so the next best idea is to dig a canal across it,
hopefully and the narrowest point so that you didn't go through all
your shovels.. Thus the two kilometre long Wolfe Island Canal
connecting Maryville to Bayfield Bay was born.
They dug and they dug, through topsoil and rock. They dug
until alas, they ran out of shovels and shovellers and the canal,
such as it was, looked more a ditch than a canal. It was
neither wide enough or deep enough to be of value. Don't get
me wrong, the canal got some use for about 20 years. But not the
use for which it was intended. In about 1870 the whole project
fell into complete disuse.
In the 20th century, local highway #96 was built on a causeway
across the canal thus cutting of the water flow through the canal.
The canal officially became a ditch.
In the 21st century the Frontenac regional council has begun to
seriously consider rebuilding the #96 causeway into a bridge
and re-digging the canal.
Good luck and don't get your boots too wet.
Images from Google
Earth
30/10/2007 |
