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Fall 1978
Listen to Howard Engel’s children, Charlotte Engel and Jacob Engel, read That Meritorious Work: The Welland Canal.
Listen to another interpretation of That Meritorious Work: The Welland Canal by John Goodyear
In the beginning
after geology
and the ice ages
there was the Twelve Mile Creek
gathering waters from four townships
carrying silt
from the Niagara Escarpment
through Grantham
to the lake.
II
There was no drama to be seen here
the pulsating power of Niagara
lay twelve miles to the east.
Only DeCew’s waterfall on the Twelve[1]
gave an old man’s imitation
looking like a Niagara
that had lost all of its teeth.
III
The streams came out of the beachwoods[2]
snaking over the flats
catching the sun.
They turned wheels at DeCew and Reynoldsville[3]
made millstones at Effingham whir
powered a woolens works at St John’s.[4]
The sinuous upper branches played with geography
laughed at the surveyors’ suggestions
and complicated the regular parallelograms
of township concessions and road allowances.
IV
Dirty Jacob Dittrickbeached his canoe
wiped his cold running nose
on a stiff buckskin sleeve
hefted a damp pack to the burdocks
and teasles of the shore
looked for a spot to relieve
his boat-cramped bowels
scratched his sweaty beard
spat
and lit his pipe.
The United Empire Loyalists
had arrived in Grantham Township
V
In those days after the war[5]
land was cheap
one shilling and sixpence per acre
but us Rangers
we got Government grants
to big tracts to the west
of the Niagara in Grantham
Some of the boys sold or bartered away
their sites for trifles
some never cleared a tree
or built a shack.
Back then it seemed a rum thing
to start all over again
living in a log house
pulling stumps
running into Indians picking berries
or staring at you from the shore
but in the long haul it paid off.
By the time I first put paint on my door
land was going for forty shillings an acre
and now that there’s all this talk
about a canal
why it’s going to be Virginia
all over again.
VI
The cataracts of Niagara
do not plunge six hundred feet
into the gorge below
as Father Hennepin
the ship-building priest
and companion of the explorer LaSalle
reported
but at a third that height
the view remains spectacular.
The intrepid Jesuit however
(more a fisher of savage souls
than of geographic nuance)
missed the point, for all his talk
of great cross streams of water
of terrible dismal thundering
of foaming and bubbling cauldrons.
The point that the waterfalls
might as well have been six hundred feet high.
The plain fact
that the falls of Niagara
mark the end of passage west
into the heart of the continent.
VII
If it wasn’t for me [Merritt speaks]
they’d still be dragging wagons
over the portage trail.
If it wasn‘t for me
they’d still be counting the population
in tens not thousands.
Talk all you like
about Isambard Kingdom Brunel[6]
and Stephenson[7] and the rest
the honest people of Lincoln and Welland
have in their elected Member of Parliament
one who long has dreamed of the power of water
who knows well the dread strength of iron
of shipping of industry and of commerce
who calls the thrifty agriculturalist, brother.
The Parliament now may claim to have had
the canal in mind as far back
as the end of the war,
they may claim to have had it in mind
as far back as the Flood
but it wasn’t Noah of old who made them see sense
it was William Hamilton Merritt
of St Catharines.
VIII
In the late fall of 1815
I went down to Mayville,
Chautauqua County, New York,
where I heard all about De Witt Clinton’s[8]
modern marvel, the Erie Canal.[9]
I saw the workings
and could smell a sweet future
for the merchants already
locating along the right of way.
I won’t say that at that moment
I suddenly imagined an all-British waterway
linking the vast Atlantic to the distant
waters of Lake Superior
but I had loosed my fancy from
its stauntion[10] at the ledger desk.
Returning home on horseback
I took the portage trail around the falls
here Elijah Phelps’[11]wagons hauled stores
along the rutty road.
As I watched the straining capstan turn
pulling loaded wagons up the limestone incline
goods for the troops at Niagara
supplies for the garrison on Grand River
merchandise that would fan out across the province
I first conceived the plan of a canal
around the waterfall of Niagara.
IX
It will mark the death of Niagara[12]
and the portage trade.
Is it forgotten in the inns of St Catharines
that less than ten years ago Niagara
was burned to the ground
by the same Americans who are now
shareholders in the Canal Company?
……………………That Niagara crowd has been against
……………………every form of progress
……………………from the invention of the wheel onward!
If you define progress as what lines
your pocketbook, I speak out for
……………………You speak sour grapes and bilgewater!
……………………In your view progress is what puts the canal
……………………through your acres not mine.
You admit it then? [William Lyon Mackenzie speaks]
Your misrepresented scheme
this chimera of a speculative brain
this great public work
which appropriates private property
for the benefit of a private stock company
is nothing more than a public fraud
a fraud to which the bemused and misled officials
of this province have been a party.
Is it only an accident
that this canal will run through your land?
Is it only by chance that the water power
will turn your millstones?
……………………Would you have the entrance to the canal [William Hamilton Merritt speaks]
……………………under the muzzles of American guns
……………………at Fort Niagara? Would you force
……………………our commerce to beg a by-your-leave
……………………from the federated republicans?
……………………You blockhead, don’t you understand
……………………if we don’t act now, the Americans
……………………will have unseated Montreal as
……………………the hub of eastern trade
……………………and the vast riches of the west
……………………will pass through American hands to New York
……………………and not through Niagara and down the
……………………St Lawrence?
X [William Hamilton Merritt speaks]
Now, I’m a man of business
not a poet
I can understand a balance sheet
and tell by the look
in a man’s eyes whether to trust him
but when it comes to talking about the canal
I find myself cracking open old words
like walnuts at Christmas
and taking out new meanings.
I was convinced of the soundness of the plan
and I talked and wrote about it
wherever I could.
For years I could talk of nothing else
I was a preacher with one sermon.
XI
The first time I heard
Merritt talk about
his much vaunted canal
was in the back room at Dr Chase’s[xiii]
old store, where the Post’s
printing office now is.
We listened to him for over an hour
and to hear him talk
it was only a piddling feeder ditch
two and a half miles long
running from the Chippawa Creek
to the west branch of the Twelve.
The way he described it
he and I could have dug it
in an afternoon without unbuttoning our vests.
And the results of this puny effort
would keep my run of stones spinning
winter and summer, no freshets
overflowing my milldam in spring
or summer drought closing me down.
We all put in a little seed money
and I went with him to measure the ground
According to the figures
we needed a cut of about thirty feet deep
over the height of land.
Now to tell the truth
I didn’t put much stock
in Merritt’s talk about shipping
but I was canny enough to see there’d be
hydraulic power to spare
so I was hooked like a trout
in my own millpond.
XII
In a fine plug hat
George Keefer[i] braved
a steady November wind
and lifted the first spadeful
of leathery earth
out of the Deep Cut.[ii]
The work had started
and if there had been photographers
they would have caught
forced smiles and shiny black suits
a tape recorder would have caught
the barking of some farm dog
unaccustomed to symbolic ceremonies
in the rear while up front
George tried to remember the words
of his speech designed to encourage
the work ahead and perhaps
get the directors of the Company
to pay in their committed shares.
And underneath the grounds
they stood on
the quicksands of the Deep Cut
waited to swallow up
what they could of the whole enterprise.
XIII
Full of hidden quicksands
that ate up the new-dug banks
the frustration of over a thousand
lusty but complaining Orangemen and Papists
the Deep Cut tested wiry Oliver Phelps
as he rode up and down the Cut
mounted on his old gray mare.
Subcontracting from Messrs Hovey & Ward[i]
the Cut was his and he told everybody
(a man of few jokes but some reading)
that this was the most unkindest Cut of all.
Hundreds of horses and oxen
knee-deep in mush
wishing for back-hoes
and the armory of yellow excavators
that remained secret and uninvented.
Fires, strikes, Irish rows, and work hold-ups
charted their days
waiting for water to be hauled
from Ball’s spring
all the way to Black Horse Corners[ii]
waiting for the lumber rafts
floating over from Little York[iii]
they wore out their harness.
Men felled by the ague or fever
foretold Panama
while Merritt kept trying
to keep this whole enterprise
afloat by finding new money new investors.
XIV [John DeCew speaks]
They brought in a new surveyor
I didn’t hear about it until later.
They picked a new route
and it finished me
and many another
with mills that now run dry
with less power now than ever.
We were bamboozled,
we were Lotus Eaters
we were tricked.
All the trade and commerce
went up Captain Dick’s Creek.[1]
I could look for a hundred years
and never see a sloop
pass up the stream
beneath this window.
XV
A string of forty little locks
he wore round his neck
a rosary of his accomplishments
a testament to his will.
He kept the whole thing going
kept the workers digging with their picks
kept the money men entrammelled
until it was finished
not as he would have wanted it
but well enough
like a house of cards
it might fall if you breathe
it stood there by the force
of Merritt’s personality
the water level tenuous
the logs above water
already beginning to rot
but they did manage a celebration
as two sloops climbed up the stairs
to the distorted sounds of Handel
above the vanquished waters.
XVI
Loud let the thund’ring cannons roar ;
The R. H. Boughton nears our shore :
Sound the trumpets—rattle all the drums—
The Briton’s Ann and Jane, rejoicing comes :
They come from the blue wave of Ontario fair,
With canvass beaming bright, and streamers waving rare !
See ! the vessels climb the mountain side ;
Anon, they dash into the Welland’s tide ;
Ontario’s daughters spin Niagara’s wave ;
Ontario’s daughters in Lake Erie lave.
Send aloft the glowing strains of Handel[i] ;
Roar away the guns of Captain Randall[ii] :
Tell the world there’s Merritt in that work,
By which our pots and pearls, our beef and pork,
Shall find a ready sale at Montreal—
XVII
Making swords of teasles
torches of bullrushes
bows of willow and ironwood
we gobbled our days
my brother and I
by the Buck Rogers banks
of the western branch
of our private Twelve.
In the shadow of the CNR trestle
we lobbed stones at the rapids
from which Garth Dittrick’s brother[2]
had once pulled a dead body.
During the war[3]
we watched Mr Tennyson carry his .303
across the gray bridge and back
to his kerosene shack
winning the war
on Western Hill.[4]
We ate our way through the cherry grove
sat high in the lightning-scarred pear tree
consumed our sun-spotted days
along the banks of green water.
We explored the gullies and knobs
of these spring-burned slopes
falling into the antique rose gardens
of Merritt Estate
a secret within a secret.
XVIII [Merritt speaks]
I was the maker and doer
I kept the others hopping
I found salt in my well
developed it into a tidy
sideline
I discovered and developed
the mineral waters
which have made this place a splendid rival
to the great Saratoga Springs
I played with stocks and bonds
dabbled in railways
and suspension bridges
I believed in transportation
as strongly as I did in wealth,
power and progress
And slowly the changes are happening
the dirt tracks will be mended
the swamps filled
the harbors dredged
I can see a procession of masts
running behind St Paul Street
a whole forest of them
bringing out to the Atlantic
the vast produce of the west.
XIX
Ghost-hooves echoed along the cobblestones
spiders watched from their webs
on the horsehead finials.
We played hide and seek between the high hedges
and tightrope-walked the plank fence
beneath the locust trees
and once in a hillside thicket
discovered the embossed word “Wolf”
in a block of gray limestone.
Along the slippery bank we found muskrat traps
and became Scaramouche and Captain Blood[5]
among the swinging vines
of a wild grape arbor.
Where a cable crossed the creek
just above where it joined
the Old Canal
some of us used to swim
the chilly green waters
fighting the current
and avoiding the contamination
of the papermill effluent, a white chemical stain,
which divided the green of the west branch
from the dirty brown of the canal water
coming from behind St. Paul Street.
[1] Dick’s Creek: a tributary of Twelve Mile Creek, joining it at St. Catharines after flowing north through a gulch from the Niagara Escarpment. Named for Richard “Captain Dick” Pierpoint (ca. 1744 – ca. 1837), a Black Loyalist settler in the St. Catharines area.
[2] On 21 November 1936, the remains of James Davis were discovered by two boys – Russell Gordon Dittrick (1920-2001) and Leslie Roy, 17.
[3] W.W. II.
[4] Western Hill: a suburb on the west side of St. Catharines through which the Great Western Railway ran beginning in November 1853.
[5] Scaramouche: an historical novel by Rafael Sabatini, originally published in 1921. It is a romantic adventure that tells the story of a young lawyer during the French Revolution. Captain Blood: His Odyssey is an adventure novel, also by Rafael Sabatini, originally published in 1922.
[i] Mssrs Hovey and Ward: Alfred Hovey of Montezuma, N.Y., was a contractor who had worked on the Erie Canal. With his partners – Smith Ward and General A.S. Beach – he took one of the first contracts (for Section 2) on the First Welland Canal, including the tunnel, signed 15 November 1824. When the tunnel had to be abandoned in 1825, they took the important contract for the Deep Cut, 7 July 1825.
[ii] Black Horse Corners: an early name for nearby Allanburg.
[iii] Little York: Toronto.
[i] George Keefer Sr. (1773-1858): mill-owner, farmer and first President of the Welland Canal Company.
[ii] The Deep Cut: an area of high land between Allanburg and Port Robinson that proved to be the most difficult excavation on the First Canal.
[1] The Twelve: early name for the area of St. Catharines in reference to its location on Twelve Mile Creek.
[2] beachwoods: sic – beechwoods.
[3] Reynoldsville: a neighbourhood in southwest St. Catharines which today is referred to as Power Glen. This is in reference to the nearby generating station. Mills were established in this part of the valley of Twelve Mile Creek as early as the late-eighteenth century. In 1854, Benjamin Franklin Reynolds (1811-1896) purchased the entire complex and renamed it Crown Mills. The settlement adjacent to it became known as Reynoldsville.
[4] DeCew, Effingham, St. John’s: small industrial centres above the Niagara Escarpment, each powered by water.
[5] War of 1812.
[6] Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859): an English engineer famous for designing, among other structures, the Clifton Suspension Bridge which spans the River Avon in Bristol, England.
[7] Robert Stephenson (1803-1859): inventor of the first efficient steam locomotive.
[8] DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828): Governor of New York State and prime instigator of the Erie Canal.
[9] Erie Canal: when opened in 1825, the Erie Canal connected Lake Erie with New York City via the Hudson River.
[10] stauntion: stanchion? (a post or upright bar).
[11] Elijah Phelps (1750-1843) operated a service transporting goods along the portage road that circumvented Niagara Falls – an initial effort to deal with the obstacle of the cataract.
[12] “Niagara”, presently Niagara-on-the-Lake, was the original capital of Upper Canada and an important centre on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Niagara River.
[xiii] Dr. Chase: reference to Dr. William C. Chace (1795-1875), a druggist and medical practitioner in St. Catharines and Chautauqua, N.Y. Chace was a partner with Merritt in the development of the salt springs in St. Catharines. In 1822-23, he was also a key figure with Merritt in soliciting subscriptions for the future Welland Canal and in undertaking a survey of its possible route.
Source: Queen’s Quarterly, vol. 85, no. 3, Fall 1978, 404-413
Published in Spirit of the Big Ditch: The Story of the Welland Canals in Pictures, Poems and Songs. Compiled, edited and annotated by Robert Ratcliffe Taylor. St. Catharines: The Historical Society of St. Catharines, 2024
The Historical Society of St. Catharines 