Welland Recreational Waterway Welland Recreational Waterway The Welland Recreational Waterway is a water channel in the city of Welland, Ontario, Canada. It is an old alignment of the Welland Ship Canal that has been abandoned after the construction of the Welland By-Pass in the 1970s. The Waterway is now managed by the Welland Recreational Canal Corporation to provide enjoyment for the city's residents. Most local residents refer to it as the "old canal" or simply "the canal". The bottom of the canal was at a time proposed to become a roadbed for an extension of Highway 406. However, that never came to be
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