The Chignecto Ship Railway is a historic
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
portage railway
A portage railway is a short and possibly isolated section of railway used to bypass a section of unnavigable river or between two water bodies which are not directly connected.
Cargo from waterborne vessels is unloaded, loaded onto conventional ...
located in
Cumberland County Cumberland County may refer to:
Australia
* Cumberland County, New South Wales
* the former name of Cumberland Land District, Tasmania, Australia
Canada
*Cumberland County, Nova Scotia
United Kingdom
* Cumberland, historic county
*Cumberl ...
,
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland".
Most of the population are native En ...
.
With Canadian Confederation in 1867, a variety of canal-building projects were undertaken throughout the new country by the new federal government, including renewed interest in a canal that could transit the isthmus at Chignecto. The Chignecto Ship Railway project was first proposed in 1875 by notable civil engineer
Henry Ketchum
Henry George Clopper Ketchum (February 26, 1839 September 8, 1896) was a railway engineer and businessman in maritime British North America and later Canada.
Born in Fredericton, Ketchum was the first graduate of the University of New Brunswi ...
as a means to transport ships across the
Isthmus of Chignecto
The Isthmus of Chignecto is an isthmus bordering the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that connects the Nova Scotia peninsula with North America.
The isthmus separates the waters of Chignecto Bay, a sub-basin of the Bay o ...
, shortening the sailing distance between the
Bay of Fundy
The Bay of Fundy (french: Baie de Fundy) is a bay between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the U.S. state of Maine. It is an arm of the Gulf of Maine. Its extremely high tidal range is th ...
and the
Gulf of St. Lawrence by avoiding the necessity of sailing around Nova Scotia. A
canal
Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface fl ...
had been proposed for the isthmus but financing was proving difficult to secure. Ketchum submitted his proposal to the Government of Canada in 1881. In 1882 the Chignecto Marine Transport Railway Company was incorporated as a federally chartered railway. It was financed by
Baring Brothers and Company,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
.
In 1685 during an inspection of the now defunct
Acadia
Acadia (french: link=no, Acadie) was a colony of New France in northeastern North America which included parts of what are now the Maritime provinces, the Gaspé Peninsula and Maine to the Kennebec River. During much of the 17th and early ...
n settlement of
Beaubassin
Beaubassin was an important Acadian village and trading centre on the Isthmus of Chignecto in what is now Nova Scotia, Canada. The area was a significant place in the geopolitical struggle between the British and French empires. It was establ ...
,
intendant
An intendant (; pt, intendente ; es, intendente ) was, and sometimes still is, a public official, especially in France, Spain, Portugal, and Latin America. The intendancy system was a centralizing administrative system developed in France. In ...
Jacques de Meulles Jacques de Meulles, seigneur of La Source (died 1703), was intendant
An intendant (; pt, intendente ; es, intendente ) was, and sometimes still is, a public official, especially in France, Spain, Portugal, and Latin America. The intendancy sys ...
reported that the one
league portage
Portage or portaging (Canada: ; ) is the practice of carrying water craft or cargo over land, either around an obstacle in a river, or between two bodies of water. A path where items are regularly carried between bodies of water is also called a ...
could be made into a ditch, since the elevation is low.
Design

The ship railway was designed to carry vessels weighing up to 2000 tons with a proposed transit time of 2.5 hours. Ships would be carried on a cradle forming an extremely wide rail car that straddled parallel twin
standard gauge railway tracks, separated by to the centre of each track.
The tracks were built on a route that was almost perfectly straight for a distance of between the southwestern terminal on the Bay of Fundy, located at
Fort Lawrence
Fort Lawrence was a British fort built during Father Le Loutre's War and located on the Isthmus of Chignecto (in the modern-day community of Fort Lawrence).
Father Le Loutre's War
Despite the British Conquest of Acadia in 1710, Nova Scotia r ...
and the northeastern terminal on the Northumberland Strait, located at
Tidnish Cross Roads.
At each terminal the twin railway tracks descended on an incline into a stone-lined basin similar to a
drydock
A dry dock (sometimes drydock or dry-dock) is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in, then drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform. Dry docks are used for the construction, maintenance, ...
into which ships would float in and out. Each terminal had a lifting dock containing a steel grid measuring by connected to 20 hydraulic
jacks. The grids supported the cradle which carried the vessel. The cradle was pulled from the lifting dock by hydraulic power and was then pulled along the length of the ship railway by 2 steam-powered locomotives.
The terminal at Tidnish Cross Roads was located on
Baie Verte and had a moderate tidal range and was protected by two breakwaters. However, the terminal at Fort Lawrence was located on
Cumberland Basin at the discharge point of the
Missaguash River The Missaguash River (French: Rivière Missaguash) is a small Canadian river that forms the southern portion of the inter-provincial boundary between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick on the Isthmus of Chignecto. It had historic significance in the 18t ...
on the inter-provincial boundary with
New Brunswick
New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen Provinces and territories of Canada, provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime Canada, Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic Canad ...
and had a high tidal range, necessitating the construction of a
lock
Lock(s) may refer to:
Common meanings
*Lock and key, a mechanical device used to secure items of importance
*Lock (water navigation), a device for boats to transit between different levels of water, as in a canal
Arts and entertainment
* ''Lock ...
to accommodate different water levels.
Construction and demise
Construction began in October 1888 and by 1890 the project was three-quarters complete with of the rail bed finished, and of the track laid. A bridge and large stone arch culvert were built at
Tidnish Bridge - a community which received its name due to this infrastructure. And the terminals were built including the docks, breakwaters, and lock.
In fall 1890 the primary financiers of the project, Baring Brothers & Co., faced potential insolvency due to the financing of debts in Uruguay and Argentina. This created the
Panic of 1890
Panic is a sudden sensation of fear, which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking, replacing it with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and frantic agitation consistent with an animalistic fight-or-flight reacti ...
. By August 1891 work on the ship railway ground to a halt and would never restart. Ketchum appealed to the federal government for help in finishing the project but in 1892 the
Parliament of Canada refused to extend the time period for the contract with the Chignecto Marine Transport Railway Company.
Ketchum never ceased lobbying for the project but died unexpectedly on September 8, 1896, in
Amherst Amherst may refer to:
People
* Amherst (surname), including a list of people with the name
* Earl Amherst of Arracan in the East Indies, a title in the British Peerage; formerly ''Baron Amherst''
* Baron Amherst of Hackney of the City of London, ...
. He was buried in Tidnish Bridge at a cemetery that overlooked the unfinished ship railway.
Remnants
Eventually the tracks were pulled up and recycled while nature slowly claimed the rail bed. Most of the rail bed is still visible in aerial and satellite photos in the 21st century and supports several recreation trails. The land for the right of way was purchased by the
Government of Nova Scotia
The Government of Nova Scotia (french: Gouvernement de la Nouvelle-Écosse, gd, Riaghaltas Alba Nuadh) refers to the provincial government of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia is one of Canada's four Atlantic Provinces, and the sec ...
in 2012.
The docks at Fort Lawrence and Tidnish are still visible to this day; the dock at Tidnish being part of the Tidnish Dock Provincial Park. Some of the stones used for the breakwaters at Tidnish were moved in 1917 to Cape Tormentine and used in the construction of the docks used for ferry service to
Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island (PEI; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is the smallest province in terms of land area and population, but the most densely populated. The island has several nicknames: "Garden of the Gulf", ...
.
Other Chignecto Canal Proposals
With the area having been an important site for trade and military activity in the 1600s and 1700s, proposals to intersect the isthmus with a canal have emerged with various degrees of seriousness sinc
the arrival of Europeans in Canada The earliest proposals came from traders who frequented the area in the 1600s and 1700s. These early proposals occurred well prior to the creation of any strong central government in Canada which would have been able to undertake a project of this magnitude, making the Chignecto Ship Railway project (which occurred after
the creation of a Canadian central government) the first serious attempt to intersect the Chignecto isthmus.
When the Chignecto Ship Railway went defunct in the 1890s, there was a decline in enthusiasm for canal-building projects across Canada more generally since many of the canals built in the late 1800s concluded well over-budget and did not deliver promised increases in commerce. This ended any prospects of building a canal at Chignecto until the 1930s when the idea of building a canal was investigated as part of Ottawa's fiscal stimulus program in response to
the Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagion ...
. The thought was that the construction would stimulate the depressed region and the canal would increase the Maritimes' economic vitality over the long-term. A substantial investigation was undertaken by the newly formed Chignecto Canal Commission which concluded that such a canal was economically unviable due to changes in the political and economic landscape which had occurred since
Henry Ketchum
Henry George Clopper Ketchum (February 26, 1839 September 8, 1896) was a railway engineer and businessman in maritime British North America and later Canada.
Born in Fredericton, Ketchum was the first graduate of the University of New Brunswi ...
's project had begun in the 1880s. In the 50-year interim, the newly formed Government of Canada had constructed a network of railways throughout the Maritimes, meaning that any new canal would cannibalise traffic from existing public infrastructure. The Commission also found that trade between the Maritimes and New England through any Chignecto Canal would have been insignificant; since both regions competitively produced the same types of goods, neither would have much advantage in trading with the other. The Chignecto Canal Commission concluded by stating "this Commission is strongly of opinion that the proposal to construct a canal at Chignecto offers no national or local advantages at all commensurate with the estimated outlay."
Following the Second World War there have been several proposals to build a canal at Chignecto although none of them have advanced far enough to materialise into any construction. In 1960, the Economic Research Corporation argued that a canal at Chignecto would help to reinvigorate a struggling Maritime Economy. More recently, celebrated Maritime scholar of public administration
Donald Savoie argued for infrastructure spending on projects like Chignecto, which he argued to be key for Maritime economic development and is an undertaking that the federal government should have completed long before as part of its promises at Confederation in 1867.
References
{{reflist
Defunct Nova Scotia railways
Portages in Canada
Transport in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia
Buildings and structures in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia
Railway companies established in 1882