Fenelon Falls Lock Construction Began in 1882
When the first European settlers migrated to the Kawarthas, the construction of the Trent-Severn Waterway almost immediately became the political issue that could move mountains. Its proposed cost was easily enough to bankrupt the colony, but that would not stop construction. There were enough political elites interested in its completion that the colony could not say ‘no,’ so they built the easiest improvements first.
Fenelon Falls was more difficult than many of the other locks, given the height of the falls and the fact that it originally had a cascade above it (near the present-day train bridge). On the other hand, by 1880, a lock at Fenelon Falls would allow continuous navigation from Balsam Lake or Coboconk, to Port Perry, to Buckhorn—and when coupled with other proposed construction, it would open navigation on practically all of the Upper Lakes.
For any candidate to become Prime Minister, there would be a lot of pressure to complete the Trent-Severn Waterway. John A. Macdonald was a savvy politician, so during the 1878 election campaign, he raised the possibility of further work on the waterway, and won seats along the route, on his way to power. Then just before the election was called in 1882, Tom Rubidge was commissioned to make surveys at Burleigh Falls, Buckhorn and Fenelon Falls. On the eve of the election, tenders were posted, and when Macdonald was re-elected, the contracts were let on October 27. He had parlayed this round of improvements into two electoral victories locally.
Alexander Manning of Toronto and his American brother-in-law Angus McDonald received the job to build the Fenelon Falls lock for $105,701. Given the technology of the day, two locks were needed to overcome the 30-foot difference between Cameron and Sturgeon Lakes. The canal was to be a third of a mile long, 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep—deeper where the locks were located. Two days after being hired, McDonald was on site arranging for construction. He assembled a crew that soon reached 103 labourers, plus teamsters, and began blasting within nine days. He was not able to find enough workers locally so he brought in French Canadians, Greeks and Italians.
The largest part of the job was excavating all the rock, especially given the technology of the day. In an era before mechanized digging equipment, labourers and horses worked together to pry rocks free, used leverage or even a derrick to swing them up and load them, then hauled them out of the lock pit. Workers could remove the smaller rocks using wheelbarrows and hand carts. Where the bedrock could not be pried loose, workers drilled holes manually, often using hammers and bits, which were filled with black powder (gunpowder) for blasting. Excavation was a painstaking process.
In 1867, Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel patented dynamite, which he had devised as a way to stabilize nitroglycerin to make it safe and portable as a commercial explosive, complete with a blasting cap, to allow it to be safely detonated from a distance. It was said to be a thousand times more powerful than black powder, and the contractors at Fenelon Falls decided to give the new explosive a trial. McDonald and his workers lacked experience with an explosive as robust as dynamite, and at first used it like it was black powder, causing some massive explosions. It was literally raining rocks in the village, but no one was killed or seriously injured by dynamite, though there were otherwise accidents on the site. Before long, the construction crew learned how to handle dynamite safely.
The canal cut through the one of village’s mill sites and the ancient oak grove, where 50 trees had to be removed. By 1883, enough excavation was complete to begin construction of the lock. The walls were in place by 1885, using stone from Boyd’s quarry at Bobcaygeon—the blasted stone was too irregular to use on the lock walls. But the rubble was used to build other buildings, such as the livery stable for the McArthur House Hotel (Brewery) and the South Ward School (Masonic Lodge).
Despite everything that the government had spent building a lock at Fenelon Falls, it was not functional, because a ridge of stone at the head of the canal and the fixed railway bridge across the Fenelon River blocked traffic. Nevertheless, William MacArthur was appointed lockmaster on November 26, 1887, with an annual salary of $250, even though there was no boat traffic, though the pulp mill (at present day Garnet Graham Park) used the locks to bring up logs from below.
In 1889, William Kennedy of Bobcaygeon blasted the stone obstruction out of the head of the river. But still no boats could pass while the Midland Railway Company and the Federal Government litigated over who was responsible for building the new swing bridge. It was understood that if the bridge impeded a navigable waterway, the Railway Company was responsible for installing a swing. The Crown argued that the river had previously been navigable to the head of the falls and therefore the bridge rendered part of the river unnavigable. The company disagreed because there was scarcely any distance between the head of the rapids above the falls (which had been flooded by the dam above the falls) and the rail bridge. The judge found in favour of the railway, and the government’s new swing bridge was completed allowing the lock to open to traffic on December 26, 1893—just in time for winter.
A.W. Parkin’s Water Witch became the first boat to pass through the locks on May 12, 1894. In the meantime, the Anglo Saxon had sat at Fenelon Falls waiting to lock through, and by the time the works were operational, the ship was "a spectacle of ruin and decay," so after removing the machinery, it was scuttled in Cameron Lake. Eleven and a half years had passed since the tender was let for the construction of the Fenelon Falls lock, but at long last, boats could pass from Sturgeon to Cameron Lake.
