century. To accommodate this
traffic the company dug a canal around the falls of the St. Marie River,
at the point we now call "the Soo." In time this pigmy progenitor of the
busiest canal in the world, became filled with debris, and its very
existence forgotten; but some years ago a student in the thriving town of
Sault Ste. Marie, poring over some old books of the Hudson Bay Company,
noticed several references to the company's canal. What canal could it be?
His curiosity was aroused, and with the aid of the United States engineers
in charge of the new improvements, he began a painstaking investigation.
In time the line of the old ditch was discovered, and, indeed, it was no
more than a ditch, two and a half feet deep, by eight or nine wide. One
lock was built, thirty-eight feet long, with a lift of nine feet. The
floor and sills of this lock were discovered, and the United States
Government has since rebuilt it in stone, that visitors to the Soo may
turn from the massive new locks, through which steel steamships of eight
thousand tons pass all day long through the summer months, to gaze on the
strait and narrow gate which once opened the way for all the commerce of
Lake Superior. But through that gate there passed a picturesque and
historic procession. Canoes spurred along by tufted Indians with
black-robed Jesuit missionaries for passengers; the wooden bateaux of the
fur traders, built of wood and propelled by oars, and carrying gangs of
turbulent trappers and voyageurs; the company's chief factors in swift
private craft, making for the west to extend the influence of the great
corporation still further into the wilderness, all passed through the
little canal and avoided the roaring waters of the Ste. Marie. It was but
a narrow gate, but it played its part in the opening of the West.

War, which is responsible for most of the checks to civilization, whether
or not it may in some instances advance the skirmish line of civilized
peoples, destroyed the pioneer canal. For in 1812 some Americans being in
that part of the country, thought it would be a helpful contribution to
their national defense if they blew up the lock and shattered the canal,
as it was on Canadian soil. Accordingly this was done, of course without
the slightest effect on the conflict then raging, but much to the
discomfort and loss of the honest voyageurs and trappers of the Lake
Superior region, whose interest in the war could hardly have been very
se