Lachine Canal, Montreal, PQ - Philatelic Photographs on Waymarking.com

In 1998, Canada Post issued a set of ten different postage stamps featuring canals and waterways from across the country. One of these is the Lachine Canal in Montreal. First opened in 1825, it’s the oldest of the featured waterways.

At the end of the seventeenth century, La Chine (French for China) was a small settlement on the eastern shore of Lake Saint-Louis just up-river from Montreal. It was so named (perhaps in a derogatory sense) because it was believed to be the jumping-off point for the fabled northwest passage leading to the Pacific Ocean and ultimately China. Though Lachine never became the gateway to the Orient, it did serve as the eastern terminus of several major canoe routes to the interior of the continent and thus became a hub of the fur trade.

After being talked about for over a hundred years, a canal was finally built in the early nineteenth century connecting Lake Saint-Louis (at Lachine) to the old Port of Montreal. Besides bypassing the treacherous Lachine Rapids, it provided hydraulic power to various industries that sprang up along its route. This Lachine Canal provided safe navigation for over 130 years until the St. Lawrence Seaway (which utilized a new canal south of the rapids) opened in 1959. Today, the canal is used for recreational purposes and is part of the Lachine Canal National Historic Site.

The stone building seen on the stamp was completed in 1803 and predates the canal by over twenty years. It was built by the Northwest Company as a warehouse for the fur trade. Today, it’s a museum administered as a separate National Historic Site dedicated to the fur trade at Lachine.

Stamp Issuing Country: Canada Date of Issue: 17-Jun-1998 Denomination: 45c Color: multicolored Stamp Type: Single Stamp Relevant Web Site: [Web Link]

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Date Logged Log User Rating   08/24/2021 petendot visited it