First Welland Canal points on the Lake Erie shore, and also offered a natural harbour for the ships waiting to enter the canal. The new part of the canal was to run in a fairly straight line, except for a stretch where it followed a local ravine and a creek to minimise required excavation of hard rock in the area. The Welland Canal Company obtained a loan of 50,000 pounds from the Province of Upper Canada. Construction started soon after, but it was delayed by rain, difficulty in clearing land, and a cholera outbreak in 1832. Neither the Wainfleet Marsh nor the rock
Welland Canal well as heavily industrialized areas of the United States and Ontario, to be shipped to the port of Montreal or to Quebec City, where they were usually reloaded onto ocean-going vessels for international shipping. The Welland Canal eclipsed other, narrower canals in the region, such as the Trent-Severn Waterway and, significantly, the Erie Canal (which linked the Atlantic and Lake Erie via New York City and Buffalo, New York) by providing a shorter, more direct connection to Lake Erie. The southern, Lake Erie terminus of the canal is higher than the northern terminus on Lake Ontario. The canal includes eight