The Trent–Severn Waterway is a canal route connecting Lake Ontario at Trenton to Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, at Port Severn. Its major natural waterways include the Trent River, Otonabee River, Kawartha Lakes, Lake Simcoe, Lake Couchiching and Severn River. Its scenic, meandering route has been called "one of the finest interconnected systems of navigation in the world"."Trent–Severn Waterway National Historic Site", Parks Canada
The canal was surveyed as a military route, but the first lock was built in 1833 as a commercial venture. This connected a number of lakes and rivers near the centre of the waterway, opening a large area to navigation by steamship. The government had begun construction of three additional locks when the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 broke out. This led the government to re-examine the project, concluding that the route would have too many locks to allow rapid movement for military purposes. They decided that the locks under construction would be completed, but the rest could be turned into timber slides. This left the completed inland section with no outlet, which business interests addressed by connecting to the route with a number of new toll roads, plank roads, and later, railways.
John A. Macdonald's government restarted construction in the 1880s, adding a number of new locks and pushing the route westward before construction once again halted. For many years after this, the canal was used as a political tool to garner votes from areas along the route, with little construction being carried out. It was not until just before the turn of the century that a number of political changes built up incredible pressure on Wilfrid Laurier's Liberals and serious work started once again. The canal reached Peterborough and Lake Simcoe in 1904. The final sections were greatly delayed by World War I, with the link to Trenton opening in 1918, followed by the link to Georgian Bay in early 1920. The first complete transit of the waterway was made in July of that year.
By the time the route was completed, its usefulness as a commercial waterway was over; ships plying the Great Lakes had grown much larger than the canal could handle, and the railways that had connected to the canal now took most of its freight. But the introduction of motor boats found the Trent–Severn perfectly positioned as a pleasure boating route, and today it is one of Ontario's major tourist attractions. Its passage through cottage country, both Muskoka in the west and the Kawarthas in the east, draws thousands of visitors every year. It also forms a major portion of the Great Loop. Today it is officially organized as a National Historic Site of Canada linear park operated by Parks Canada"The History of the Trent–Severn Waterway" , Parks Canada It is open for navigation from May until October, while its shore lands and bridges are open year-round.
Geography
The total length of the waterway is , beginning at Trenton, Ontario, with roughly of man-made channels. There are 44 locks, including 37 conventional locks, two sets of flight locks, hydraulic lift locks at Peterborough and Kirkfield, and a marine railway at Big Chute which transports boats between the upper and lower sections of the Severn. The system also includes 39 swing bridges and 160 dams and control structures that manage the water levels for flood control and navigation on lakes and rivers that drain approximately of central Ontario's cottage country region, across four counties and three single-tier cities, an area that is home to more than a million Canadians.
It reaches its highest point of at Balsam Lake, the highest point to which a vessel can be navigated from sea level in the Great Lakes–Saint Lawrence River drainage basin. The navigable summit of the Monongahela River (part of the Mississippi River drainage basin) at Fairmont, West Virginia is, at , the highest point in North America (the summit of the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal at its highest point of is higher still).
The Trent–Severn Waterway is managed by Parks Canada under the statutory authority of the Historic Canals Regulations (which outline and delegate the responsibilities for navigation, resource protection, dredge and fill operations, the operation of boater campgrounds, etc.). The navigation corridor includes over of shoreline and over of water. More than private and commercial properties abut the navigation corridor of the Trent–Severn Waterway. The Trent–Severn Waterway also has regulatory responsibility and authority under the Dominion Water Power Act for the 18 hydroelectric generating facilities located along its route.
History
Samuel de Champlain was the first European to travel the network of inland waters from Georgian Bay to the Bay of Quinte with the Hurons in 1615. It was this same route that would later be canalized and become the Trent–Severn Waterway.
Military origins The desire for a communications route from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron had been a topic of discussion as early as 1785, and gained new importance with the opening of the War of the First Coalition in 1793. Had the newly formed United States entered the conflict on the side of their French allies, they could have cut access to the upper great lakes at Detroit or Lake St. Clair. This would have denied waterborne access to the important British trading post at Michilimackinac.
To solve this problem, John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, began construction of Yonge Street and the Penetanguishene Road to provide an overland portage route to Georgian Bay via Lake Simcoe that would bypass these choke points. Construction of Yonge began in 1794, reaching today's Holland Landing in 1796. However, the road was not passable for much of its length until 1816, and the entire route to Georgian Bay some time after that. The route was used for its original military purpose sparingly during the War of 1812, primarily to ship supplies to a naval depot built at Holland Landing. Its rough location is marked today by a large anchor that was being shipped from Chatham, England to Wasaga Beach (then known as Schooner Town), but was abandoned in Holland Landing when the war ended.
The lack of convenient access to the upper lakes demonstrated by the war led to new calls for inland waterways for military use, and led to the construction of a number of canals to provide rapid access to the Upper Canada area. These included canals at Grenville, Chute-à-Blondeau and Carillon Canals, all along the Ottawa River, as well as the most ambitious of them all, the -long Rideau Canal from today's Ottawa to Kingston. Together, they connected Montreal, Ottawa and Lake Ontario, bypassing significant hazards along the Saint Lawrence River and long stretches of open water on Lake Ontario.
The need for a similar route bypassing Yonge Street and providing access to the upper lakes remained an issue, and several surveys in the area were carried out between 1815 and 1827. Prominent among these was a survey made by Catty in 1819, which concluded that no reasonable alternative to the Trent River was obvious on the eastern end of the route. Unfortunately, its circuitous route ran to Rice Lake before ending up only from the shores of Lake Ontario. Further, the Imperial government's interest was tempered by the cost of the Rideau, originally budgeted at $2,370,000 but eventually costing more than $4 million by the time it opened in 1832. Several attempts to raise the funds for the Trent system using local sources, including a proposed lottery, all failed and the plans remained dormant.
Bethune's lock James Gray Bethune was a businessman in the port town of Cobourg with a steamship company working Lake Ontario. He was skeptical that the Trent connection would ever be built, but he felt that the inland sections north of Peterborough still offered considerable commercial prospects. The problem of connecting to Lake Ontario could be solved by other means. Bethune, a major player in local politics, led efforts to build a railway from Coburg, which would either have to route around Rice Lake through other counties, or build directly over it. Port Hope, a short distance to the west and a major competitor for Coburg's shipping traffic, proposed both a road and a canal. Port Hope's location at the western end of Rice Lake placed them slightly closer to the lake than Coburg, and offered a direct land route to Peterborough around the western tip of the lake while remaining within their Northumberland County.
By 1832, Bethune had completed his first plan for a combined canal and rail network. This would start in Coburg and run via railway to Sully (today known as Harwood), where it would connect to steamers on Rice Lake. These would cross the lake to the Otonabee River, providing access to southern Peterborough. Here they could transship via stagecoach to Bridgenorth on Lake Chemong. Locks at Purdy's Mill (today's Lindsay) and Bobcaygeon would provide access to an extended area including Pigeon Lake, Stony Lake, Sturgeon Lake and Lake Scugog, known collectively as the Back Lakes (today known as "the Kawarthas").
Bethune launched the Pemedash on Rice Lake in 1832, providing daily service between Peterborough and Coburg. The boat was a flat-bottomed design able to travel in shallow waters, more a powered barge than passenger steamer. It had side-wheels and was powered by what one passenger called a "feeble eighteen-horsepower engine". Catharine Parr Traill called it "a poor excuse for a steamboat" when her family used it in late summer 1832. A second steamer of the same design was built in Peterborough, sawn in half, carried overload to Bridgenorth and launched as the Sturgeon on 5 September 1833. Both steamers proved popular; in the less than three months the lakes were open to traffic in its first year of operation, the Sturgeon made 61 trips, delivering 60 barrels of pork and 55 tons of other cargo.
A group organized by Bethune met on 1 June 1833 to review tenders for the construction of a series of locks on the Back Lakes. However, they received only two tenders, both for the lock at Bobcaygeon. After several additional meetings and a visit to the site, the contract was awarded to Pierce, Dumble and Hoar for a price of $8,000. The company's crew arrived on 2 August and began construction immediately. The rest of the season was taken up with basic construction, blasting out the lock from the limestone with blackpowder. When the weather turned cold on 14 November the lock was nowhere near complete, and the contract was extended.
By the time the land thawed in the spring, Bethune was insolvent due to bookkeeping irregularities at his branch of the Bank of Upper Canada in Coburg, likely due to his use of some of these funds for the transport scheme. His steamers were sold off to new owners. In spite of there being no money from Bethune, and that the contract was clearly underbid, Pierce, Dumble, and Hoar decided to continue construction using their own funds. This proved disastrous; the lock was set too high in the rock and could not be filled at low water in the summer, and even when water was available it leaked out faster than it filled. It remained useless for four years.
Baird's survey