''Entrevue avec Monsieur et Madame Marleau'' by Natacha Marleau

Geneviève and Gaetan Marleau

Gaetan: The canal was dug between 1892 and 1899. It opened in 1899. At first, they thought it would take three years and be finished by 1895, but there were landslides. They had to redo the whole canal and reinforce it with concrete in a lot of places because the soil kept collapsing. So instead of finishing in 1895, it was completed four years later, in 1899. It remained in operation from 1899 until 1959—so it was functional for 60 years.

It brought a lot of work to the area, and many immigrants came to settle here for the construction of the canal.

Geneviève: Oh yes, there were Polish and Italian immigrants who came to dig the canal. My grandfather, Émile Maximilien Isabelle, left Sherrington and came here to help dig the canal back in those days.

Gaetan: My father worked for 32 years on the St-Emmanuel bridge. My grandfather worked on digging the canal, and my father operated the turning bridge in St-Emmanuel for 32 years. We were lucky—we learned how to turn the bridge when we were 14 or 15. My dad would let us do it.

Geneviève: Before it closed, I remember when I went to school, we used to go for “bridge rides,” as we called them. The bridges would swing open to let the boats through. If we saw a boat coming, we’d hurry and jump on the bridge to go for a ride while it turned.

Gaetan: There were six swing bridges all along the canal. There was one in Cascades, one in Saint-Antoine (on Rang Saint-Antoine), one in St-Fereol (Les Cedres), one in Saint-Dominique, one in Saint-Emmanuel… I think there were seven! Then in Les Coteaux (formerly called Coteau Landing)—so that makes seven. I thought there were six, but I think it’s actually seven.

In the beginning, there were barges pulled by tugs. Later, they used boats called "canallers." Some came from the United States, but most were Canadian—mainly from the Canada Steamship Line.

Boats from the U.S. would set sail from the border regions — Lake Michigan and so on. At the time, those were pretty big boats. They mostly carried lumber and grain from out west. The grain would arrive in Thunder Bay, in the Great Lakes, then make its way over here.

In the last few years the canal was still open, most of the boats were coming from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. But by then, the locks were getting too small for those big international ships. That’s when they decided to build the canal in Beauharnois instead. Rather than expanding this one, they went ahead and built a bigger canal on the other side of the coast.

Geneviève: When the canal shut down, it brought a lot of sadness to the people in Coteau-du-Lac. It also caused a sense of insecurity because of the income that might be lost.

I also want to point out how many people were involved in maintaining the canal and its banks. It was always really clean. When the boats passed by, you could see everything on the outside of the ship so clearly. The sailors, even the deckhands, would wave at us. It made us want to travel, to get out and see the world. It brought some excitement, a kind of joy, just watching the boats go by.