The Newmarket Canal, officially known but rarely referred to as the Holland River Division, is an abandoned barge canal project in Newmarket, Ontario. With a total length of about , it was supposed to connect the town to the Trent–Severn Waterway via the East Holland River and Lake Simcoe. Construction was almost complete when work was abandoned, and the three completed pound Locks, a swing bridge and a turning basin remain largely intact to this day.
The project was originally presented as a way to avoid paying increasing rates on the Northern Railway of Canada, which threatened to make business in Newmarket uncompetitive. The economic arguments for the canal were highly debatable, as the exit of the Waterway in Trenton was over east of Toronto, while Newmarket was only north of the city. Moreover, predicted traffic was very low, perhaps 60 tons a day in total, enough to fill two or three barges at most.
From the start, the real impetus for the project was a way to bring federal money to the riding of York North, which was held by powerful Liberal member William Mulock. That it was a patronage project was clear to all, and it was under constant attack in the press and the House of Commons. As construction started in 1908, measurements showed there was too little water to keep the system operating at a reasonable rate through the summer months. From then on it was heaped with scorn in the press and became the butt of jokes and nicknames, including "Mulock's Madness" and "The Aylesworth Ditch".
The canal was one of the many examples of what the Conservative Party of Canada characterized as out-of-control spending on the part of the ruling Liberals. Their success in the 1911 federal election brought Robert Borden to power and changes at the top of the Department of Railways and Canals. They quickly placed a hold on ongoing construction, and a few weeks later, ended construction outright. Today, locals refer to it as "The Ghost Canal".
History Previous water transport The East Holland River running through Newmarket had long been used as the eastern branch of the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail, running from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe and then on to Georgian Bay. Its location on this route led to the founding of the townsite on the bank of the river in 1796.
Traffic on this section led William Roe and Andrew Borland to set up a fur trading post under a huge elm tree on the bank of the river at the ending of the War of 1812. The two spread the word that they would be trading at that site, saving trappers the need to travel all the way to York (Toronto) to sell their goods. This "new market" gave its name to the town. Borland moved on, but Roe stayed in town and set up a new store at the south end of what developed into Main Street, complete with a dock on the river for traders to use.
Shortly thereafter, initial planning began for a Toronto and Georgian Bay Canal that would end on the Humber River in Toronto. The Humber spreads out across a wide area north of the city, including the hills south of Newmarket. Kivas Tully's team selected a route somewhat further to the west closer to Bond Head. The plans later reemerged as the Huron and Ontario Ship Canal, but remained dormant.
Concept
The town of Newmarket had undergone rapid growth before the start of the 20th century due largely to the efforts of William Mulock, then a sitting member of the Liberal Party of Canada and Wilfrid Laurier's right-hand man in the province. He used his influence to bring a number of industries to the town, setting up along the Northern Railway of Canada's mainline which passed northward through town along the river valley. The remains of these industries are still visible on the local geography; Joseph Hill's lumber mill and later William Cane and Sons factory's mill stock now forms Fairy Lake, the Davis Leather Company's buildings today form the Tannery Mall, and one of the original Office Specialty factory buildings has been converted to lofts just east of Main Street.
The Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) took over the Northern Railway in 1888. In 1904 they raised rates from 3 cents per ton-mile to 4 cents. They also charged deliveries anywhere along the line the full fare to Toronto, meaning businesses further north had no pricing advantage over Toronto factories when receiving materials from further north, but still had to pay for their own goods to get that extra distance to market. This would add several thousand dollars a year to operations shipping to Toronto, and the factories in Newmarket complained that this would put them out of business. A series of depositions by business leaders from the towns along the line failed to change the GTR's mind, and alternates began to be considered.
At this time the Trent–Severn was in the last stages of being constructed. It was already clear that the era of the barge canal was passing to the railway; when elimination of tolls on the Erie Canal failed to improve business, the chief engineer of New York stated that "canals as a successful and necessary means of transportation have outlived their usefulness." Whether it was worth the money to complete the Trent was a matter of great debate. While it offered convenient access from Lake Simcoe to trade on the upper Great Lakes, its southern exit was still not complete, and impractically far to the east at Trenton. It was ultimately completed both for political reasons and as a way to secure water rights for hydroelectricity, the idea of using it as a shipping route was no longer important.
Mulock proposed a short canal route from Holland Landing to Newmarket, with the possible extension to Aurora. South of Aurora, the Oak Ridges Moraine would make further progress difficult. The usefulness of such a route was suspect, given that the northward flow of goods was limited to perhaps a day, compared to 40 moving south to Toronto. Although the canal would be marginally useful for imports, it would not be very useful for exporting the resulting goods back to market. Mulock invented a number of schemes to drive more traffic, including shipping oats via the Trent to the American Cereal Company (later known as Quaker Oats) in Peterborough.
Mulock and the mayor of Newmarket, Howard S. Cane, one of the "Sons" of the local factory, met by chance on the train to Toronto in September 1904. Mulock presented his idea and Cane was enthusiastic. The two put up posters for a town meeting on the issue on 9 September, and in spite of the short notice, the meeting the next day drew a crowd of 300 people. The unanimous decision contained two proposals, one for the canal to Newmarket and Aurora, and a second to widen portions of the Western Holland River through today's Holland Marsh area to Schomberg, and a similar widening of the Black River south from Lake Simcoe into Sutton. The organizers then began collecting signatures on a petition to the federal government, presenting it with almost everyone's name from the entire surrounding area in January.
Walsh's survey Two weeks after the meeting, the temporary organizing company known as the Trent Valley Canal Extension, hired E. J. Walsh to produce a preliminary design for the canal. Walsh had been a primary engineer on the later sections of the Trent-Severn, as well as many other major construction projects across the country. He was, however, still working on his own while many of his former underlings had since received appointments in the civil service. Walsh considered himself a victim of this patronage, and stated that "My engineering record is unassailable: the works successfully carried out are an uncompromising refutation of any reflection thereon" while going on to state that his superiors in the Department of Railways and Canals were "self-seeking obsequious sycophants".
Mulock had leaked the news that Walsh had been hired even before the formation of the company, but Walsh did not actually arrive in Newmarket until 17 October 1904. Despite constant pressure from Mulock, Walsh refused to hurry the survey and spent the next two months making careful measurements. Although no accurate measurement of water flow was made at that time, it was clear the supply was a major concern. This, and the lack of traffic, suggested keeping the canal as small as possible.
Summoned to Ottawa in January 1905, Mulock ordered Walsh to produce an estimate by 11 January. Continuing to protest over a lack of measurements, he put the figure at $328,825. This was apparently a shock to Mulock, and the cost was so high that it could not be buried in the Trent budget. This meant that Mulock would have to push the funding through Parliament as a separate project, which led to the very real possibility that it would be cancelled. In response, Mulock organized a group of prominent businessmen from the Newmarket area to travel to Ottawa to meet with Laurier. They arrived on 21 February 1905 and found the Prime Minister more than interested in the project, and he noted:
Mulock, meanwhile, began to come under fire in the House of Commons for what the Conservatives called a blatant "bribe to the electors of North York". He had the Minister for Railways and Canals, Henry Emmerson, order a more complete estimate from Walsh, this time with an eye to reducing the cost as much as possible. Mulock continued to pressure Walsh to complete the estimates, and Walsh continued to stall in fear that he would be held responsible if there were any overruns.
Walsh was once again summoned to Ottawa in March 1905 and told to present a new plan with costs cut as much as possible, which he only agreed to after being promised that he would not be held to them. He came up with slight modifications, replacing some of the concrete with stone-filled wooden pilings for piers and other features, and the replacement of some of the swing bridges with higher wooden ones. These changes reduced the price by $37,000, enough to cross the $300,000 threshold that might stop development. He was then instructed to begin the detailed construction planning, which he started in June. From this point, work to continue south to Aurora, as well as work on the West Holland and Black River, no longer appears in any of the plans.
Political changes Mulock had become increasingly disenchanted with the Liberal Party, and in the summer of 1905 he announced he was retiring his position owing to ill health. A by-election on 22 November 1905 was won by Liberal Allen Bristol Aylesworth, but with a significantly smaller majority than Mulock had enjoyed. This was a sign of a growing public shift to the Conservative party, and Aylesworth was placed in the position of having to support the canal in order to maintain Liberal support in the area. Mulock was appointed the Chief Justice of the Exchequer and remained active in politics and in the construction of the canal.
In July 1905, M. J. Butler was promoted to the position of Deputy Minister and Chief Engineer of the Department of Railways and Canals. Apparently there was deep personal enmity between Walsh, Mulock, Butler and Butler's friend Michael John Haney, whose connections placed Butler in the position of Chief Engineer. Butler and Haney were very much "railway men," having worked together on a number of projects in the past, and the two intensely hated Mulock and his interference in the department's work. Shortly after taking office, Walsh noted that Butler had spoken "in a contemptuous manner of Sir William Mulock and the Holland River improvements, and expressed himself as thoroughly opposed."