Cornwall's Historic Waterfront

Cornwall’s waterfront was transformed by the Cornwall Canal, dug between 1834 and 1842 with as many as 2,500 construction workers, and by riverside facilities that linked the town to shipping and industry. A pedestrian swing-bridge erected in 1843 supplemented a culvert and provided direct access to the riverside wharf built in 1844, while much of present-day Lamoureux Park is landfill. Soon after the canal opened, water privileges were auctioned to the highest bidder, and by 1850 three grist mills, a sawmill, and a brewery had been built on the canal’s south bank. In 1878, Canadian Illustrated News placed woollen, grist, flouring, and sawmills owned by Andrew Hodge at the canal bridge above the steamboat landing, and in 1893 the Toronto Globe credited surplus canal waterpower with enabling immense factories that directly and indirectly became the foundation of a prosperous era. The bridge turned on a central axis to let ships pass through the canal, and Canada Steamship Lines maintained two warehouses at the Cornwall Wharf until the canal closed; on July 10, 1958, employee Vane Silmser locked them for the last time, ten days after the canal’s closing.

Ontario · Canada