Once used for industrial and transportation purposes, the nearly one hundred year old Canadian canal is now used exclusively for recreational purposes. The Waterway connects the Great Lakes Ontario and Huron. The route essentially follows the waters from Georgian Bay to the Bay of Quinte, which Samuel Champlain used to travel with the Indians as early as 1615.
Logging interests, which dominated the use of this connection of rivers, delayed the start of the construction of a series of locks until 1833. It took 87 years to complete the new inland waterway and lock system. One of the more interesting features is the Lift lock system at Peterborough shown in this video graph.
When your author was perusing the Hall papers at Trent University for the book, “Florida’s Big Dig,” he came across a color map of eastern Florida ca. 1892 showing the lands reserved by the State for the canal company dredging what would become the Intracoastal Waterway. The color map, reproduced in three sections for the book, was so large, there wasn’t a scanner anywhere in Peterborough or Trent University large enough to scan the 15″ x 25″ map in one scan. It took three scans. It is shown in my book in black and white.
Florida’s Big Dig 