Brantford - Buffalo via "The Feeder": Schooner Days MIV (1004)

by C. H. J. Snider

LAST schooner to use the forgotten Feeder canal, so far as we know, was the Julia Larsen, when Capt. Lowe took her down from Port Dover in 1906 or 7, to go on the drydock. He must have had a hard passage, for in 1890 Blake Mathews took the Rapid City through it with 65,000 of lumber from Donovan and Oliver of Toronto for Dunnville, and the old swing bridges were then so caked with mud and rust that if it hadn't been for a big bay mare named Eva, who bent one bridge to a hairpin shape, the Rapid City might have ended her days in the Feeder. We shall tell about that voyage anon.

FORGOTTEN WATERWAY

The Feeder was once thronged with traffic from Brantford to Buffalo — shingle-bolts, passengers, chinaware, cookstoves, potash, grain, coal and even rafts of logs—for while it did not run all the way from one place to other it was an essential link in Welland Canal commerce for both countries. The Feeder started at Allenburg, on the second or "Old" Welland Canal and wound west until it came near to the Grand River, where one fork, the north, stretched to the river just above the Dunnville dam, and another shot southwest to the river mouth at Port Maitland.

We who have turned from steel rails to concrete and rubber cannot realize what a convenience and necessity waterways and canals were, when water was the only level highway in the whole province, as it was a hundred years ago, and country roads climbed up and down endlessly through mud and corduroy. The Grand River was one of the great ready-made power and transportation systems, and the Feeder hooked it up with both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The two forks of the Feeder were a great boon to vessels trying to use the Grand River from its mouth to where Brant forded it and gave Brantford its name, for the forks took them, past the obstacle of the Dunnville dam aforesaid. Of course the coming of the railways took away the Feeder's usefulness.

COMMERCE ON FEEDER

A benefactor at the moment unknown sent us this about the old Feeder from The Dunnville Chronicle, whereof W. C. Fry is editor and publisher:

"Mr. Harry Asher, local shoemaker, has in his possession a fragment of Dunnville's romantic history of long ago. This link with the past is a portion of a page torn from the cash book of the toll collector at the Feeder Canal locks in Dunnville, and is a record of ships that passed through during a four day period from August 27th to 30th, 1867.

This was the period of Dunnville's story before the coming of the railroad, when the Grand River from Port Maitland to Brantford was the main artery of commercial freight and passenger traffic, most of it conducted by steamers of the Grand River Navigation Company.

In order to surmount the Dunnville dam it was necessary to utilize the Welland Canal Feeder, the ships leaving the Grand at its mouth and traversing the Feeder by way of Stromness and returning to the River at Dunnville.

FOUR LOCKS TO BRANTFORD

On the way between Dunnville and Brantford, other locks were located at Indiana (now vanished), York, Caledonia, and another near Brantford. The main route lay between Buffalo and Brantford.

The first steamer on the river was the Indian Chief, and others were the Swallow, the Queen, and the Caroline Messmore. It has been said that no other undertaking of the early days did more to open up this part of Ontario and develop its resources than did this navigation of the Grand. But the coming of the railroad ended this era.

Returning to the page from the cash book of August, 1867, here is he list of vessels and masters recorded as having passed and paid tolls:

First is just listed as a raft, probably loaded with lumber, with A. Smith as master; then the N. Higgins with E. Bradley; the Saucy Jack under O. S. Ryers; the Dover, captained by R. Smithers, this vessel being a side-wheeler passenger steamer which plied steadily to Brantford under the command of Mr. Richard Smithers, grandfather of Ralph, James and Richard of Dunnville's present; the Alexandra, Captain T. Richardson; the Clyde, under R. Cufsen; and the Eagle, commanded by E. Gaffett.

EVA—and the last cargo through the Feeder.