1929
Watch Brenda Schultz perform The Welland Ship Canal
‘Tis a mighty undertaking,
Is the Welland Ship Canal,
And its great and varied business
Sets the thinking world in thrall.
As we gaze on excavations,
Concrete walls and giant locks,
Our brains reel at the magnitude
Of Mother Earth and rocks,
That have been torn from Nature’s side
To serve mankind’s demands
And let our commerce freely flow
In ships from other lands.
All nationalities combined
Have done their share of toil,
And countless aliens have come
From Central Europe’s soil
To use their muscles, brains and hands
In this gigantic task.
A word of praise is due them all,
No more, no less, we ask.
There’s Poles and Austrians, Serbs as well,
Czecho-Slovakians, too,
And swarthy sons of Italy,
And Swedes with eyes of blue;
The Englishman, the Irishman
And canny Scot as well
Have done their bit, to show their grit,
How well, let others tell.
In this colossal project,
The risks to life are great,
And many brawny sons of toil
Were hurled to their fate.
So let us give a passing thought,
A little prayer sincere,
For widows, and for orphan, too,
Who lost their loved ones dear;
And when in retrospection,
We view this work with pride;
We’ll think of those now gone before
Across the “other side.”
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 