Port Colborne in Old Photographs: Sugar Loaf, the Canal & Mills

Long before it carried its present name, the settlement at the Lake Erie end of the Welland Canal was known as Sugar Loaf, after the rounded hill and point that rise above the lakeshore. Early photographs in the Niagara Falls Public Library archive still label the area "Sugar Loaf Point, Port Colborne," showing a sandy beach lining the north shore of Lake Erie with only a scattering of houses behind it. The community was later called Gravelly Bay before it was renamed Port Colborne in 1833, honouring Sir John Colborne, then Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada. Those old images matter because they capture the town at the exact moment it shifted from a quiet lakeshore hamlet into the southern gateway of one of the most important shipping canals in North America. Looking at them today, you can trace how the harbour, the canal banks and the first lock bridges reshaped a fishing and farming settlement into a working canal port.

Several of the most striking images show the canal itself in its earlier forms. One photograph captures the propellor steamer "ASIA" travelling downbound through the second Welland Canal at Port Colborne around 1880 — a vessel that represents the transition from wooden sailing schooners to the larger steel-hulled steamers that came to dominate Great Lakes trade. Another, captioned "Entrance to Welland Canal, Port Colborne," shows the third canal passing straight through the centre of town around 1918, with stores and businesses lining one bank and hydro poles and a lock bridge framing the view. Sailing ships still crowd the harbour in a photograph dated around 1884. Together these images record three generations of the same waterway, each one wider and deeper than the last, until the fourth Welland Ship Canal opened in 1932 and set the channel that ships still use today. They are a rare visual record of how canal engineering changed the everyday face of a Niagara town.

Many of the scenes in the archive can still be found on the ground, which makes Port Colborne a rewarding stop for anyone who likes history they can walk through. West Street, the restored promenade along the canal, runs beside the same channel the old photographs framed, and it is now lined with shops and patios rather than grain sheds. A short distance south, Lock 8 — historically described as one of the longest locks in the world — lets you stand beside lakers that still lock through on their way to and from Lake Erie. Sugar Loaf, the namesake hill, sits near the marina and waterfront park where pleasure boats now moor. Every year on the August long weekend the town's Canal Days festival fills the waterfront with tall ships, heritage displays and music, turning the canal's working past into a celebration. Pairing the archive images with a walk along the canal is the cheapest, richest history lesson in south Niagara.

The photographs described here come from the Niagara Falls Public Library's "Historic Niagara" digital collection, a free online archive that includes the Casino Niagara Cares Regional Heritage Collection and thousands of catalogued images from across the region. Anyone can search it: a query for a place name such as "Port Colborne" returns dated images of the canal, the harbour, the grain elevators and the streetscapes, each with a short description of what is shown. It is a genuine primary source rather than a tourist reproduction, so the captions, dates and place names are worth reading carefully. For local families, the collection is also a way to trace how a specific street, mill or shoreline looked a hundred years ago. If these images sparked your interest, the next stop is the harbour itself — and the companion guide to Port Colborne's grain elevators, which explains why so many of these photographs feature towering mills on the water.