North St Catharines Walking Tour: Ontario St. to Lake St.

Duration: 30 minutes Difficulty: Easy

The canal route continues between Ontario St. and Lake St. where Locks 4 and 5 were located. Click on the map to jump to a description and picture for each item.

1.

The Weir Channel: Starting on the east side of Ontario Street the original weir channel from the 3rd canal remains. You can see it on the right side of the picture, fenced in and covered by trees.

Today it appears to function as an open creek, although it's probably the only heavily fenced in creek in the city.
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weirditch.jpg

2.
Lock 4 - Third Welland Canal: If you continue on along the canal route and behind a large condominium complex built on Ontario St. you'll come to another exposed lock. This one really looks like the remains of some ancient building.
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3.
Lock 4 - Third Welland Canal: This shot looks along the channel as it continues southeast.
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4.
Lock 4 - Third Welland Canal: Finally a last shot back at the lock. The lock is remarkably well hidden so that few people know it's there. Regardless it's taken care of and preserved.
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lock4.jpg

5.
The Weir channel II: There's little to say about the weir channel but it's remarkable to see it continuing along the canal route. This ditch just upstream from lock 4 still connects the weir channel to the main channel of the canal. It's probably still from the original canal dug 120 years ago.
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6.

Raised Channel: Approaching Lock 5 of the 3rd Welland Canal the channel started climbing well above the level of the surrounding fields.

Today the raised channel is filled in but was never leveled. Here you can see Linwell Rd. cutting through the channel. On the other side a school yard and a soccer field sit atop what remains of the 3rd Welland Canal.
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7.

Lock 5 - 1921: The real lock 5 is shown on this picture taken in 1921. Again you can see the weir channel running just below the lock.

Linwell Ave. didn't cross the canal but did serve as a property boundry between farms. Some form of it can be seen in the extreme top left corner. The school building that's there today would be in the top left corner as well.
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lock5.jpg

8.
Lock 5?: This is the only school I've ever seen that featured a huge hill in the playground. Your looking at the raised channel of the Third Welland canal running through the school. At this point it's over 12 feet above the normal ground level.
I'm not sure why they left the mound intact. Looking at the map it's possible that part of lock 5 is buried toward the back of the school yard. Regardless the hill continues to the back of the schoolyard before coming to an abrupt end.
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9.

The End: It was a difficult picture to capture but your looking from the end of the raised channel in the direction that the 3rd Welland Canal once followed.

From this point forward the channel is leveled. The Weir channel actually continues for another 100 meters off to the right of the picture, just like it was originally dug.
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