A History Of The Murray Canal

During the 1790s, Upper Canada’s first lieutenant governor, John Graves Simcoe, promoted the idea of a canal in the area between the Bay of Quinte and Presqu’ile Bay on Lake Ontario, but his idea did not come into fruition until decades later. Why did it take so long? In A History of the Murray Canal, historian Dan Buchanan provides a detailed account of the building of the Murray Canal and how lobbying and politics combined to finally make it happen in 1889. Industries, farmers, and merchants around the Bay of Quinte all wanted an easier, cheaper path to move products within the region. Mounting pressure from them, supported by their members of Parliament, pushed politicians to finally approve the necessary funding to build a canal. The construction of the Murray Canal began in 1882, with the contract going to a company that had experience with the Welland Canal. Steam-powered dredges dug the canal straight from Twelve O’Clock Point to Presqu’ile Bay, through land that had been expropriated from farmers along the route. When it opened at last, the Murray Canal became an important link in the regional transportation system, a role it continues to play today as part of the Trent-Severn Waterway. Currently the only published historical record of the Murray Canal, A History of the Murray Canal not only chronicles how the canal was built and how it has changed over the years, but also sheds light on the movers and shakers who got the job done.

The Trent-Severn Waterway took almost ninety years to build, cost over $24 million, and contains some remarkable engineering feats -as well as a few spectacular mistakes. The passage of the first boat through the waterway in July 1920 marked the realizati

In December 1883, Peter Lazier was shot in the heart during a bungled robbery at a Prince Edward County farmhouse. Three local men, pleading innocence from start to finish, were arrested and charged with his murder. Two of them — Joseph Thomset and David Lowder — were sentenced to death by a jury of local citizens the following May. Nevertheless, appalled community members believed at least one of them to be innocent — even pleading with prime minister John A. Macdonald to spare them from the gallows. The Lazier Murder explores a community's response to a crime, as well as the realization that it may have contributed to a miscarriage of justice. Robert J. Sharpe reconstructs and contextualizes the case using archival and contemporary newspaper accounts. The Lazier Murder provides an insightful look at the changing pattern of criminal justice in nineteenth-century Canada, and the enduring problem of wrongful convictions.

"Report of the Dominion fishery commission on the fisheries of the province of Ontario, 1893", issued as vol. 26, no. 7, supplement.