Lot 28
JOHN HERBERT CADDY
Additional Images
Provenance:
Private Collection, Toronto
Literature:
Frank Adams, “Historic Desjardins Canal Slowly Drained by Falling Lakes Level,” The Globe and Mail, Friday, Nov. 20, 1964, page 4.
Note:
“The Desjardins Canal transformed Dundas into a major port in the early Nineteenth Century... At the close of the War of 1812, the pioneer communities of Hamilton and Dundas vied for Port supremacy. Hamilton, situated on a natural harbor at the west end of Lake Ontario, took the advantage by dredging a canal through a shifting sandbar, making it accessible from the lake. But Pierre Desjardins, a shipping clerk from Paris who had settled in Dundas, raised $15,000, formed his own company and started a rival plan for another canal, this one from Hamilton harbor into the marsh, two miles to the west... Nearly six years and almost $100,000 later the Desjardins Canal opened.” The canal is “considered by historians to be one of the most prized remains of this country’s early maritime ventures...”