Financing the Welland Canal: an Episode in the History of the St. Lawrence Waterway

Many American historians have stressed the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 as a turning point in the expansion of commerce across the Appalachian barrier from the seaports of the Atlantic coast. Less attention has been paid to the Erie's competitors, perhaps because they were uniformly less successful than their prototype. Yet they have a certain interest. In this article we shall be dealing with only one of these competing projects—the Welland Canal in Upper Canada, the by-pass for Niagara—and with only one aspect, namely the financial. Nevertheless, we shall perhaps be able to draw some general conclusions as to the reasons why the Erie Canal succeeded so brilliantly, while other projects, at least in a relative sense, failed.