Standing on the crest of the Oak Ridges Moraine, it’s hard to imagine that a ship canal was planned to run through this area. But there it was, on Geo. Tremaine’s 1860 map of Peel County. It showed the path of the Projected Toronto and Georgian Bay Ship Canal winding its way from Humber Bay through the King Township highlands to the marsh lands at the Holland River. I wondered how they planned on doing it. Was it ever started, and does any of it remain?

Rowland Burr, a prosperous local businessman and mill owner, was the initial promoter of the Ship Canal and in 1857 plans were announced to provide a shorter and better shipping route between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. It was suggested that the proposed canal would reduce the distance between the upper Great Lakes and the tidewaters at Quebec City or New York
by 400 miles. The Canal was an ambitious project that would have literally changed the face of King Township. It was to be financed by British and American bankers to the tune of approximately one to two billion dollars, in today’s currency. By any measure, it was a huge
undertaking.

The canal would have taken from five to seven years to build and would stretch 100 miles, from start to finish. It would rise from 246 feet above sea level at Lake Ontario, follow the Humber and Holland River valleys to Lake Simcoe, and then from Kempenfelt Bay to the Nottawasaga River valley, exiting on Georgian Bay at 579 feet above sea level. It was a huge advancement in
canal design and would be capable of handling both steam-powered screw driven ships, as well as sailing vessels of a greater size than any other existing canal in Canada at that time. It would have 41 locks measuring 250’ x 35’ with 13 feet above the sills. By comparison, the Welland Canal of the day, had locks of only 150’ x 26.5’ by a depth of only 9 feet over its sills.

The most astounding feat of all would be a mammoth excavation project to deal with a surface rise to approximately 186 feet, for the canal to cross the Oak Ridges Moraine from the King-Vaughan Township line, to where it would connect with the Holland River. Some 36 million cubic yards of clay, gravel and sand would have to be excavated in a deep cut through the Ridge, for
a distance of nine miles and having an average depth of about 80 feet. Massive continuous piers, formed with boulders and concrete and faced with close piling, would be erected on both sides of the cutting to protect the slope.

The proposed path of the canal would follow the river valleys, low lying marsh areas and natural valleys through the Township. Considering the forestation and undergrowth the surveyors would have encountered at that time, plus the limited equipment they had to work with, it is amazing to see how well the path of the proposed canal followed the natural landscape. In the Mid-1850s, however, few people would have given much thought to the impact of the project on the environment. Today of course, the project would be subject to a mandatory Environmental Assessment and questions about how it would affect the long term stability of the forests, wetlands, wildlife and water levels let alone the scenic landscape would have been addressed.

Unfortunately, the reason or combination of events that lead to the canal’s demise have been “lost in the fog of history”. It is known however, that there were several factors in play at the time, which may have contributed to its demise. For example, the railway boom was gathering steam and great attention and promise was being generated by this alternate form of transportation.

Also, the plan for the ship canal was not without its competition from other proposed canal systems. Among these, promoters had long since encouraged the construction of a Montreal, Ottawa, and Georgian Bay ship canal. It was first proposed by Colonel By when building the Rideau Canal and even Sir Wilfred Laurier promised, that if his party was returned to office, the
canal would be built. It did not happen, and early in the 1900s, the project, like others, gradually faded into obscurity.

While the Toronto and Georgian Bay Ship Canal was never built, all was not lost. Its ‘state of the art’ design, for the time, set many new standards for canal construction. It demonstrated that by increasing the size and depth of its locks and by using steam and hydraulics in their operation, larger ships could be facilitated and encouraged to use our inland waterways. Some of these
innovations were soon incorporated into a redesigned Lachine, St Lawrence and Welland canal systems that ultimately resulted in the present St Lawrence Seaway.

Had the Toronto and Georgian Bay Ship canal been built the economic benefits to the region would have been considerable, however there is another side to the coin. Following the path of the proposed canal through King Township I was struck by the number of times I came across beautiful vistas and picturesque landscapes. To think that all this might have been lost if the canal had been constructed - perhaps it’s just as well that it never became anything more than a projected line on an old map.