This colossal project : building the Welland Ship Canal, 1913-1932 / Roberta M. Styran and Robert R. Taylor.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Styran, Roberta McAfee, 1927-2015, author.

Taylor, Robert R., 1939- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Canals--Design and construction.

Canals.

Welland Canal (Ont.)--History.

Welland Canal (Ont.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (369 pages) : illustrations, maps, photographs

Place of Publication:

Montreal, [Quebec Province] : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016.

Summary:

This Colossal Project presents an absorbing epic on the building of the fourth Welland Canal, which connects Lake Ontario and Lake Erie and allows ships to bypass Niagara Falls. An immense undertaking, the canal is a vital part of North America’s infrastructure and still functions as an essential part of the St Lawrence Seaway. Emphasizing the role that vivid personalities – including engineers John Laing Weller and Alex Grant as well as contractors and labourers – played in the construction of the canal, Roberta Styran and Robert Taylor use archival sources, government documents, newspapers, maps, and original plans to describe a saga of technological, financial, geographical, and social obstacles met and overcome in an accomplishment akin to the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. A story of Canadian skill, courage, vision, and hardship, This Colossal Project details the twenty-year excavation of the giant channel and the creation of huge concrete locks amidst war, the Great Depression, political change, and labour unrest. Building on the work presented in Styran and Taylor’s This Great National Object, which told the story of the first three Welland canals built in the nineteenth century, This Colossal Project chronicles an impressive milestone in the history of Canadian technological achievement and nation building.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

A Canadian Conception

One of the Very Few Great

This Colossal Project

Challenges Facing the Ship Canal’s Builders “on the Ground”

Vision, Skill, and Courage

Excavating the Prism

Creating the Lifts

Managing the Water

Building Bridges

“Facing their own kaisers at home”

Ameliorating Disaster and Squalor

“A settled and established community”

Parks and Publicity

“Surpassing anything of the kind”

Some Welland Ship Canal Construction Engineers

Construction Sections and Contractors

Construction Fatalities

The Welland By-Pass

Associations, Commissions, Committees, and Treaties Affecting the Welland Canals

Martyrs of Progress (Poem)

Historiographical Essay

Milestones in the Construction of the Welland Ship Canal, 1913-1932

Glossary

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed December 15, 2016).

ISBN:

0-7735-4834-3

0-7735-4833-5

OCLC:

952211229