Economic History of Canada - Canals

Canals

To aid settlement and the timber trade, the nineteenth century saw a spree of canal building projects across the region. Canals could not only bypass rapids and falls, but they could connect previously unlinked parts of the river system. They also made transport of goods far easier and safer. Canals were created for the timber trade, the transport of wheat, and also for military reasons.

The construction of the Rideau Canal was one of the first projects in Upper Canada to employ thousands of laborers. It was under the control of the British military. The British officers and the contractors they hired both looked at the workers as instruments of production required to facilitate the most economic completion of the project. Because of the shortage of jobs, labourers had little choice but to endure difficult and often dangerous working and living conditions. The response of workers to these harsh conditions was militant but sporadic. They tended to act against individual property owners and contractors in order to obtain the immediate necessities for survival. More concerted activity was discouraged in large part by the military which posted soldiers along the line of the canal to suppress dissent and ensure a cheap supply of labour.

Canals such as the Rideau Canal, the Welland Canal, the Trent-Severn Waterway were massive engineering projects, and huge expenditures. The government of Upper Canada was bankrupted by these projects, and this was an important factor in the merging of Upper Canada with the still solvent Lower Canada into one colony in 1840.