7-12-24 Port Colborne & Niagara Falls, ON

Pearl Mist docked at Port Colborne sometime during the night.  Our assignment was to be on the bus to Niagara Falls at 8AM.  There is not much to tell you about this monument of nature that you can’t learn for yourselves online.  The height of the falls is 176 feet and the drop to the rocks below is 70 feet.  Every second, 150,000 gallons of water go over the escarpment.  It is a stunning, breathtaking thing to see;  God’s Cathedral, I call it.  The enormous, powerful, thunderous roar of the water makes the ground tremble beneath your feet and you can feel it in your chest. 

In the tunnel behind the falls

Trusting tourists in the tunnel

Another perspective and getting pretty soaked,
below and slightly behind the falls

Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side

View of the river behind the falls,
just before the water tumbles
over the escarpment

 

Annie Edison Taylor was the first human to go over the falls in a barrel in 1901.  She did this because she hoped it would provide her with fame and money to help with her financial problems.  Eventually, though, she died penniless and was buried in a pauper’s grave.  More than 5,000 people have gone over the falls, either as stunts or accidentally.  Not all lived through it.  One seven year old boy who was out on a boat joyriding with his Dad and sister was the victim of a boating mishap.  His sister was pulled from the river and rescued.  Dad and the boy went over the falls.  Dad died.  The boy was spotted by the Maiden of the Mist, pulled from the water and had a few scratches.  By the way, if you decide to try a daredevil stunt to ride over the falls, or if you decide to commit sideways by doing the same (and you live), you will be arrested and you’ll go to prison.  I guess I won’t try it as you’re screwed either way.

Annie Edison Taylor and
her barrel

 

We’ve now seen the falls from three perspectives.  Years back, the Maiden of the Mist took us to see them from the water below, face on.  Then, we took a helo ride to see their beauty from the sky.  This time, it was the Journey Behind The Falls.  The only direction from which we haven’t seen the falls is from the bottom and we’ll pass on this. 

Cable car ride to observe
the whirlpool downriver
from the falls

 

The only way a ship can connect to Lake Ontario from Lake Erie or the other way around is through the Welland Canal (or by going over the falls, which is not the best idea).  It was the brainchild of William Hamilton Merritt.  Building a canal was attempted many times in the late 1800s.  The problem was that it was not just a matter of digging a trench to connect the two lakes.  The drop from Lake Erie to Ontario is 325 feet so the system had to be a series of locks.  The impossible takes longer and so between 1904-14, the USA finally succeeded.  But there were a large number of locks and at one point there were 45.  Well, logically, that doesn’t allow very big boats to travel on through.  Back to the drawing boards.  At some point, the number of locks was reduced to somewhere in the 20s.  Still not too useful.  And this brings us to today’s Welland Canal consisting of 8 locks through which very large ships can make their way from the Atlantic Ocean (and beyond) all the way to Lake Superior.  The locks can accommodate ships up to 700 feet long.  You know what this means:  The thousand-footers that we see on the inner four lakes (13 of them) are, “lake-locked,” you might say.  They cannot go to the sea for they are restricted by the Welland Canal locks (not to mention Niagara Falls).  So!  Our tour is to terminate in Toronto and this means we must navigate the Welland Canal! 

Pilot boat meeting our ship.
The guy in the white pants is the
pilot who will jump on Pearl Mist and
the USA pilot will jump off.

I don’t know why, but the USA pilot had to disembark our ship and a Canadian pilot hopped on board to navigate us down through the locks.  There are only certain locations, at locks 3 and 4, where two ships can pass in opposite directions.  Elsewise, a ship must wait for another to clear the lock before it can enter.  This takes a while.  The entire distance is about 35 miles which took half the afternoon and part of the evening for the Pearl Mist.  Logically, the crew set up a bar on deck 6 where we could watch the haps!

Touching the wall of the lock

Nobody knows what these numbers
in the locks mean, including our crew.

Leaving one lock and
sailing to another

Federal Franklin on one side
of lock 4 as we enter on the right

Two ships passing in
lock 4

 

It was a rather melancholy evening for us passengers as we said good-bye with hugs to the fine crew with whom we had made friends over the last many days.  It’s hard to believe that this is over already.  We deboarded and hopped on a bus to the airport in Toronto and had to admit that it was a shock to be back among the living and the busy crowds.  Brother George will meet us at MSP and we’ll have a bit of family time.  Time for a time out but I’ll be back.

Relaxing on deck 6

Rob relaxing as we travel
through the locks

I'm trying to learn to relax.