This Colossal Project: Building the Welland Ship Canal, 1913–1932 by Roberta M. Styran and Robert R. Taylor (review)

Reflecting the authors' painstaking research extending over decades, this volume details a massive infrastructure project that, in early twentiethcentury Ontario, required significant investment of money, expertise, and effort to bring to completion. The canal in question followed up on three earlier structures that, for various reasons, were by this time inadequate. Robert Styran and Robert Taylor see in this fourth canal – known as the Welland Ship Canal – an achievement worthy of serious and sustained historical investigation focused primarily on the experiences of involved parties and affected communities.

Styran and Taylor released in 2001 a volume in the Champlain Society series combining substantial discussion of the four Welland canals with several hundred pages of reproduced primary sources pertaining to the projects. And then in 2012, they published This Great National Object: Building the Nineteenth-Century Welland Canals with McGill-Queen's University Press. Their broad expertise on the histories of these various canals underpins one of the major arguments of this most recent volume – that the Welland Ship Canal was a distinctly Canadian achievement, one reflecting a nation coming into its own in the aftermath of World War I.

In the context of this argument, those involved in building the canal – whether as engineers, contractors, or labourers – are positioned as nation builders. Engineers are presented as men of vision and dedication (and, not infrequently, eccentricity). Labourers are committed and brave. Contractors are resourceful, if not always entirely dependable. In this way, in Styran and Taylor’s volume, the men (and it is all men in these roles) engaged in the nitty-gritty of infrastructure construction are accorded a place in the work of bringing Canada to maturity as a nation-state.

While those engaged in canal building are accorded laudatory treatment throughout the book, chapters nine through twelve add texture to this historical rendering. The first two of these chapters address labourers' experiences, vividly depicting the work experiences and broader lives of workers. The authors usefully engage the dynamic labour relations context of this period, documenting the tension between the imperative of worker solidarity and the reality of an extremely diverse workforce. The last two of these chapters situate the massive undertaking of building the Welland Ship Canal in relation to those living in its immediate environs, illustrating how the work of nation building could transform, and sometimes even severely threaten, local communities.

In a manner reminiscent of their earlier Champlain Society volume, this latest release includes robust primary documentation. An impressive amount of illustrative material not only speaks to the scope of the canalbuilding effort but also usefully preserves some of the working documents through which the canal was developed. Of the book's eight appendices, the third is unquestionably the most poignant: an as-of-yet incomplete list of those individuals killed in the process of building the canal. The fatalities included Antonio Collini, killed by a fall at the age of fifteen.

Styran and Taylor introduce their volume by explaining how it was on arriving in the local area that they began to appreciate the historical significance of canals. Considering the persistent local interest in this infrastructure, it is likely that This Colossal Project will find an audience among an interested public, and the casual reader will be rewarded with satisfying detail and vivid personalities. And, for true canal enthusiasts, the primary documents the volume makes available are sure to inspire future investigations.