[ScreamingViking]

Not sure this is the place, but the Spec had a story about the Desjardins Canal yesterday. Had this actually been a success (and geography, harbour and wetland depths, ship design/technology and size etc. would have doomed it anyway) imagine NOT having Cootes Paradise as it is today... and how Dundas and Hamilton would have evolved and complemented each other differently... and whether we'd have even had a steel industry and industrial complex in Hamilton's north end. I think it was a foregone conclusion that this was a failure from start to finish, but the ambitions have to be respected.


The curse of the Desjardins Canal
It was supposed to spur economic growth in Dundas, but the Desjardins Canal ushered in disaster

https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilto...ins-canal.html


Mark McNeil
The Hamilton Spectator
Tue., March 7, 2023











Pierre Desjardins never got to see the canal that would bear his name.

Ten years before it finally opened in 1837, the head of the Desjardins Canal Company was found dead in a field in Grimsby under mysterious circumstances.

Some believe he was thrown from his horse while setting out to collect debts on company shares. But an inquest came up with a more spiritual explanation. It said he “died by the visitation of God.”

Whatever took his life, at the age of 52, his sudden death can be seen as part of a pattern of adversity and setbacks that cursed the massive economic development effort to connect the town of Dundas to Hamilton Harbour and Lake Ontario.

There were major problems raising funds. There were technical challenges in constructing it. And there was a constant need for expensive dredging after the canal was built because of the silty nature of Cootes Paradise.

While the shipping route did initially give the Dundas economy a major boost, the prosperity was short lived. Commercial shipping declined within 25 years and eventually the waterway was abandoned by cargo ships. Dreams of the town becoming a major transportation hub evaporated. Hamilton would eclipse Dundas as the shipping and industrial centre for the area.

And the curse went beyond economic disappointment.

“The canal has been the site of many tragic accidents,” says Austin Strutt of the Dundas Museum and Archives.

The worst example took place 166 years ago this Sunday, on March 12, 1857.

Twenty years after the opening, the canal was the scene of one of the country’s worst railway disasters, killing 59 people and injuring 18 others. A Great Western Railway train en route to Hamilton from Toronto was crossing the wooden bridge above the canal when it suddenly derailed.

The structure gave way tossing the engine and cars downward, crashing through the ice 20 metres below.

Initially, investigators thought the bridge was defective, but an investigation determined a broken axle was to blame.

If the accident had taken place on solid ground, instead of a bridge, casualties would have been far less. Maybe no one would have been seriously hurt.

It was the worst possible place for the axle to give way.

It was a bridge that existed because of the canal project. Workers had to cut through a section of Burlington Heights to connect the waters of the bay with the wetlands of Cootes Paradise. That created a gap that required a major overpass for trains to cross. (Today, that expanse is managed by the High Level Bridge, Highway 403 and a rail bridge.)

Back in the mid-1800s, designers opted for a swing bridge. It allowed the structure to be moved aside to allow tall ships to pass through.

When the rail bridge was reconstructed after the disaster, a fixed design was chosen. So taller ships could no longer pass. It helped to render the canal obsolete for cargo shipping, especially at a time when vessels were getting larger on the Great Lakes.

And then there was more tragedy. Seven years after the train disaster, on June 12, 1865, four teenagers drowned near the entrance to the canal. Edwin and Caroline Coleman, children of Dundas’ first mayor James Coleman, were among the victims. They were in a rowboat with three others, George and Mary Creighton, and a young woman named Catharine Gage. Their boat was caught in waves from the steamer Argyle that led to the boat tipping over after one of the girls stood up. George was the only survivor. He managed to hold onto a canal post until he was rescued.

The news devastated the town, and they say James Coleman was never the same. Coleman was an importer and exporter in the grocery business who became fabulously wealthy because of the canal. Now the waters that aided his fortune had taken two of his children.

“There were a lot of drownings over the years,” says Strutt, who is in the early stages of planning an exhibition about the canal at the Dundas Museum this summer.

“Newspapers were filled with accounts of people drowning in depths of water where they shouldn’t have drowned. Part of it probably had to do with the muck and silt.”

In 2013, Dundurn Press published the book “End of the Line – the 1857 Train Wreck at the Desjardins Canal Bridge” by Don McIver.

“There is so much bloody irony in all this,” the author told me in an interview shortly after the book came out. Samuel Zimmerman, the general contractor for that section of the railway line, was one of the victims. He was a man who liked efficiency and successfully lobbied against a requirement that trains come to a full stop before crossing the bridge. Perhaps if the train had halted, the engineer would have noticed a problem with the wheel axle.

There were all kinds of other stories about passengers being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Adam Ferrie, a son of Hamilton’s first mayor Colin Ferrie, was among those who died.

A few got lucky. The book tells the story of a man who got off one stop early to stretch his legs or maybe to go for a beer. He lost track of the time and the train left without him. Fifteen minutes later, one transportation system horrifically crashed into the waters of another one, forever immortalizing the surname of Pierre Desjardins.


Timeline:
1805 – Pierre Desjardins comes to Dundas from France and works as chief clerk with Richard Hatt, who runs a major milling operation in the community.
1809 – Hatt establishes an inefficient shallow channel through Cootes Paradise to Spencer Creek for water transportation of goods, and pushes for a full-fledged canal.
1819 – Hatt dies, leaving Desjardins to lead the canal project. He establishes a joint stock company to raise funds and incorporates his Desjardins Canal Company. He gets government approval to build the project.
1827 – Just as work is beginning, Desjardins dies in Grimsby, leaving his company mired in debt and uncertainty. A group of investors take over.
1837 – The canal officially opens.
1857 – The Desjardins Canal Bridge train disaster leads to 59 deaths.
1860s – Use of cargo shipping declines in the canal with larger Great Lakes cargo ships requiring deeper water. Hamilton increasingly is used for shipping.
1900s – The canal evolves into a place for small recreational boating along with some steamer excursions into Hamilton Harbour.
1967 – The turning basin for the canal is filled in and transformed into Centennial Park. Today, the Urquhart Butterfly Garden uses part of the land where the start of the canal used to be.