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, bridge 13 the Welland streetcar system (the Niagara, Welland and Lake Erie railway) was slated for abandonment before the bridge was actually opened and this track was never installed. The bridge is long and has a skew of approximately 22.5 degrees - meaning that the towers and span are off square by this amount. The reason that the skew is required can be seen from the old picture of the second canal bridge above - the canal does not run at a 90 degree angle to Main Street. While a bridge out of alignment with the road was acceptable in the 1840s,