PIONEER DAYS – IRISH LABORERS SLAVED TO BUILD WELLAND CANAL

By Robert J. Foley

[Welland Tribune, 13 April 1992]

The spring of 1825 brought new life to the Irish laborers who worked in the deep cut. The ankle deep mud was better than the bitter cold of the winter for those shovelling their way to the Chippawa. The teamsters cursed the muck, however, as their horses strained to keep the heavy wagons moving.

There were sections where the muck had to be carried to the top by hand. Men with hundred-pound sacks on their shoulders struggled up the slippery slope to load wagons that would get bogged down in the bottom. Many a man lost his footing and tumbled back to the mud below. If her were lucky he lifted the sack to his shoulder and started again, but many were injured, losing their jobs. There was no such thing as workers’ compensation to feed the sick and injured. No work, no pay was the cruel reality that they faced each day.

The canal was divided into 35 sections. Each section had a foreman. Fifteen laborers and six teams of horses. Some of the laborers worked with picks to loosen the earth while the others loaded the wagons with shovels.

John Phalen wiped the perspiration from his eyes that ran down from his hairline despite the cool temperatures. He leaned on his shovel for a moment while the foreman inspected the rock that impeded the work.

Phalen knew that if he were caught resting he would get a tongue lashing. The pain in his side that had kept him in agony for weeks was under control thanks to another laborer with knowledge of such things.

Phalen was suffering from a rupture, but the fellow had been able to fix him up with a crude truss that gave him some relief. He had to keep working for the sake of his wife who was expecting a baby any day. With two other children to feed, he could not afford to lose any time.

The foreman came away from the large boulder muttering about delays. The rock would have to be blasted with gunpowder.

“Phalen, get the drill, we’ll have to blast this one. Larkin, go and draw the explosives.”

Phalen shuddered as he pulled out a hand drill from one of the wagons. Blasting rock was always a tricky business. Just last week Frank Murphy, who lived tow shanties down from him had been blown to bits when the charge had gone up in his face. He had been the one to take the news to his wife.

The men took turns to drill a deep hole that would shatter the rock into manageable pieces for loading onto the wagons. This did not mean a respite for the others, however, as the foreman, constantly aware of the deadline for completing his section, drove them on, digging around and beyond the offending morsel of granite.

Finally the hole was pronounced deep enough and the crew was ordered up to the top out of harm’s way. The only man to be left below was to be Patty Larkin to set and light the charge. Phalen could see the glassy look in Larkin’s eyes. He had taken on too many sips from the “water” boy’s bucket and was half drunk. In his condition he stood a good chance of going up with the rock. Before he could think, he heard himself say, “Let me do that Patty, you get up top with the others.”

Phalen turned away from the look of relief on Larkin’s face. He began to place the charge carefully in the hole trying not to think of Murphy’s crumpled body lying in the mud. He lit the fuse and ran for the slope climbing for his life. Half way up the pain struck him like an axe and he slipped. For a moment he couldn’t move. He was sliding back down toward the bottom. The men at the top must have sensed a problem for despite the danger, several heads popped over the edge and began to call to him. “Hurry, John, hurry.”

Phalen struggled to reach the lip of the ditch in spite of the pain. As he neared the top, several hands grabbed him and pulled him over just as the thundering explosion shattered the air.

Phalen lay on his back gasping for air. The pain in his side was only a dull throb now. The foreman stood over him. “Are you all right, Phalen?”

“I’m fine, just slipped that’s all,” he lied.

“Well then, get off your back and start loading up that mess you made down there,” he said, a rare smile on his face. Maybe the foreman was human after all.

The backbreaking work of excavating the deep cut was carried out under conditions that we would be unable to comprehend. The cut was an average of 44-feet deep in the 1 ¾ mile stretch between Allanburg and Port Robinson.

In July, 1826, a newspaper advertisement offered wages of $10-$13 a month and boasted that only three deaths had occurred in the previous month. Single men could rent a room at a boarding house for $1.50 per week. This amounted to half their pay. A man with a team was paid a few dollars more. The men with families built shanty towns along the route picking up and moving as the work progressed.

Because of the lack of safe drinking water the “water boys,” that moved up and down the line carried buckets of raw whiskey. This thirst quencher was ladled out in tin dippers. As a result of this, accidents and violence were common place.

Disease was another problem facing the workers. Bad water and poor sanitation bred cholera, dysentry and a myriad of other maladies that killed the men and their families by the hundreds.

The Welland Canal was not built by the merchants, bankers and investors. It became reality by the sweat, blood and lives of thousands of men, mostly Irish immigrants seeking a better life for themselves and their families in a vibrant young country that was to become Canada.