Welland Canal an average of about eleven hours to traverse the entire length of the Welland Canal. Before the digging of the Welland Canal, shipping traffic between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie used a portage road between Chippawa, Ontario, and Queenston, Ontario, both of which are located on the Niagara River—above and below Niagara Falls, respectively. The Welland Canal Company was incorporated by the Province of Upper Canada, in 1824, after a petition by nine "freeholders of the District of Niagara". One of the petitioners was William Hamilton Merritt, who was in part looking to provide a regular flow of water for
Welland Canal a proposed new canal, titled the Fifth Welland Canal, which was planned to by-pass most of the existing canal to the east and to cross the Niagara Escarpment in one large 'superlock'. While land for the project was expropriated and the design finalized, the project never got past the initial construction stages and has since been shelved. The present Welland Ship Canal was originally designed to only last until 2030, almost 100 years after it first opened, and 200 years since the first full shipping season, in 1830, of the original canal. Subsequent improvements to the canal infrastructure mean that