Waters and Wonders: Niagara Falls, the Welland Canal, and a Ghost Named Swayze

Ahoy, landlubbers. Harvey here. I’m going to tell you about one of the finest days of this entire voyage. The canal. The Falls. The ghost. A birthday. A bestie. An exceptional pub.

I’d fill you in with all I saw and experienced, but alas I just heard about all of it. Third hand. From a driveway in Hamilton.

Apparently the crew decided this was a “Ford Escape” kind of day. Something about “easier to park.” I didn’t catch the full reasoning because I was too busy sitting alone and pouting under a grey sky… contemplating my lot in life. I will say this: I looked it up afterward. RV parking is available at both the Welland Canal and Niagara Falls. Designated lots. Plenty of room for a 32-footer. I’m just saying. For next time. Not that I’m keeping score.

Grumble grumble.

Anyway. Here’s what I missed.

The day started the way the best days do, with one plan for the day: Niagara Falls. Everything else just fell into place along the way.

What happened was the Welland Canal.

Lock 3, St. Catharines: Where Ships Learn to Fly

The St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre sits right beside Lock 3. If your timing is right, you’ll walk out onto the viewing platform and find a ship the length of two and a half city blocks sitting in a concrete box beside you.

Their timing was right.

If you’ve never stood next to a working Great Lakes freighter in a lock, let me tell you: the photos don’t do it. The ship fills the entire chamber. It’s absurd. It’s magnificent.

Then the lock starts to fill.

The Welland Canal exists because of Niagara Falls. Before it was built in 1829, there was no way to move a ship between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. The Niagara River drops nearly 100 metres at the Falls, which is spectacular for tourists and fatal for shipping. So they dug a canal. Then they dug a better one. Four versions later, what you have is 43 kilometres of engineered waterway with eight locks that lift vessels up the Niagara Escarpment from Lake Ontario at the north end, up 100 metres in elevation, into Lake Erie at the south.

That’s what we watched. A 700-foot ship that probably weighs more than our neighbourhood getting lifted into a different lake.

Each lock fills using nothing but gravity. 91 million litres of water per transit, no pumps. It takes about eleven minutes for the water level to rise enough for the gates to open and the ship to proceed. We stood there and watched the whole thing. Nobody checked their phones. The First Mate and his bestie climbed for the best view.

There’s a museum inside too, and I hear it’s worth the wander. This is a free stop that earns its place on anyone’s Niagara itinerary, and most people skip it entirely. Don’t skip it.

Niagara Falls: The One That Needs No Introduction

Then they drove to Niagara Falls.

Here’s the thing about Niagara Falls. You’ve seen it in every postcard, every movie, every screensaver. You think you know what it looks like. And then you stand at the brink at Table Rock and realize you did not know at all.

The Canadian side, Horseshoe Falls, is 57 metres high and nearly 800 metres wide. During summer daylight hours, more than 168,000 cubic metres of water go over that crest every minute. The mist alone is visible from kilometres away. The noise is constant and low and felt as much as heard. The water is an impossible shade of green that baffled the First Mate. Then they learned that colour comes from dissolved rock and minerals the river grinds up on its way here, about 60 tonnes per minute of it. The falls are essentially eating themselves, eroding slowly southward for 12,000 years, and will eventually reach Lake Erie and cease to exist. Not for another 50,000 years, so we’re fine. But still…

They were lucky to have their friends, the aforementioned Ford Escape driver and her sidekick, the bestie, taking good care of them on my behalf. The crew tried to give her stars on Uber and her Yelp reviews are through the roof.

Apparently it was the first weekend after school let out, and Niagara Falls knew it. Families everywhere. Grandparents with grandchildren, parents with strollers, kids running ahead on every path. Tourist speaking a symphony of languages. My crew blended right in… two GrandRaisers and their First Mate, doing exactly what everyone else was doing.

The boat tour was the Dutchman’s birthday gift. He loves boats. He also loves being completely soaked (not really), which is good, because the red poncho they give you is approximately as waterproof as a napkin. The kids were drenched before we even got close to the Falls. They found this hilarious. The adults found this hilarious. The Falls, indifferent to all of us, kept falling.

Standing on that boat while Horseshoe Falls fills the entire sky in front of you is one of those moments you don’t quite believe you’re inside. You’re looking up at the top of the water and looking down at the boiling green chaos below and the sound is everything and the mist is everything and it’s just too much for your brain to fully process. So you stand there, in your billowing red poncho, hair plastered to your face, and you grin.

The First Mate has now experienced four of the five Great Lakes on this trip. Superior. Huron. Erie. Ontario. One to go.

An Evening in Niagara-on-the-Lake

The day ended in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which is exactly as pretty as everyone says, and also exactly as touristy, and somehow both things are fine at the same time. We strolled the main street as evening came on, and ended up at the Olde Angel Inn on Regent Street for dinner.

Built in 1789 it is one of the oldest pubs in Ontario. Possibly one of the oldest buildings in Canada still in operation. The hand-hewn beams and thick plank floors are from 1815, the rebuild after the original was burned down during the American invasion and War of 1812.

According to local legend and accounts dating back to the 1820s, a British militia officer named Captain Swayze lingered at the inn during the American retreat, waiting to meet his sweetheart. American soldiers swept through, searching the building, and found him hiding in a wine barrel in the cellar. They used bayonets. The Captain did not survive.

He has, apparently, never quite left.

The Union Jack still flies above the door. The story goes that if it ever comes down, Captain Swayze gets unhappy and makes his displeasure known by rearranging table settings, thumping around in the cellar, and generally being a restless 210-year-old ghost. The pub has a certificate they’ll give you for spending the night.

The kids were convinced the place was absolutely haunted. Whether their imaginations were working overtime or not, I genuinely couldn’t say.

Either way, the food was good, the pub was warm, and the ghost, if he was there, was gracious enough to let us enjoy our meal in peace.

It was a fine day for the GrandRaiser crew, by all accounts. I’ve been assured I wasn’t missed. I find that unlikely.

I missed my crew… my family. They saw the canal that solved Niagara. They stood at the edge of Niagara itself. They broke bread with a ghost. And I sat in a driveway in Hamilton.

Next port: The Big Smoke. The First Mate has a date with a baseball diamond. And this time, I’m still not invited. Apparently there’s a train involved and I don’t fit on a train. Sigh.

Well dearest readers, that’s it for me today, thanks for reading.
Love, Harvey