[2023 – Ontario, Canada –90 km – 2 days – St. Catharines to Port Colborne and return]
Though the Welland Canal is 43 kilometres between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, the trail is slightly longer.
The canal bypasses the Niagara River.
Ships cannot simply sail over Niagara Falls without consequence.
This is the fourth set of locks in the canal’s history.
The first ones were made of wood, with people opening and closing the gates and horses pulling the ships along.
There are pieces of history all along the trail – anchors, propellors, abandoned locks.
The sign at the kiosk says that a full-sized laker loaded with wheat would provide enough loaves of bread to stretch from Halifax to Victoria, not just once, but 2.5 times.
Reading that makes me hungry for the sandwich in my pack, the bread no doubt made with Canadian wheat.
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The paved path is easy, designed more for bicycles than pedestrians, though there are plenty of both, especially between St. Catharines and Thorold.
The trail is virtually flat, with a vertical increase of 100 metres over 45 kilometres from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie.
It is downhill on the way back, but so gradual as to be unnoticeable.
Thorold is where most of the action is, with several locks in the area.
I stop to watch a ship go through the entire, slow process of dropping down in the canal.
It takes all of my patience to watch the action from start to finish.
Many of the tourists who started to watch the process give up after a half hour and wander from the viewing platform into the gift shop.
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It’s not the most exciting show on earth, that’s for certain.
From the platform, one merely watches people working at their jobs, moving goods from one place to another, albeit through a complicated part of the transportation sequence, on par with watching workers fold garments in a clothing factory, I imagine, interesting for only a short while.
Port Colborne, at the Lake Erie end of the trail, is a nice surprise.
I dine along the canal in the tourist strip, drinking beer, and watching local children leap two metres from the canal wall into the water, swim to the ladder, climb, and then do it all over again.
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During my university years, I lived in St. Catharines and had always wanted to walk this trail, but just didn’t manage to do it.
Now that the trail is complete, I drink a toast to my youthful ambitions.
