WI no War of 1822? How many canals dug across Ontario?

If the USA never tried to invade Upper Canada during the War of 1812, how many canals would get dug?

Would we still need the Rideau Canal to avoid exposing Canadian ships plying Lake Ontario?
Would the Trent-Severn Canal get dug to avoid Detroit?
Would the Welland Canal get dug?
Would the Lachine Canal get dug?
How many of those canals serve specific military missions?
 
The various St. Lawrence canals (Lachine, Welland, etc.) get dug sooner than OTL.

One of the problems with them earlier is that they were too vulnerable to possible US attack. If that isn't a danger, then building them makes far more sense.

The Rideau and Trent-Severn are poor substitutes for a proper 'St. Lawrence Seaway', and were dug only because of the US threat. So they probably don't get built. IMO.
 
The canal building without the the War of 1812 probably looks eerily similar to OTL. The Lower Canadian legislature was the real battleground for the St. Lawrence canals, and it's no shock that most of them get built post 1837-38 so those probably happen right around OTL. And without the war the Rideau probably gets delayed because America isn't seen as the enemy it was historically, but without a proper St. Lawrence canal it will eventually get built. The Welland probably gets built faster because the British/Canadians aren't quite the sticklers they were OTL when it comes to American investors.

All in all it's probably a wash.
 
Probably the Welland Canal goes a little differently because removing the War of 1812 means you change the life of William Hamilton Merritt, who may never buy property in Shipman's after his service in the war and may never buy a sawmill that hungers for canal water, and therefore may never petition for it. But you still have the basic problem of how to get goods past Niagara Falls, and you still have the likes of John DeCew living in the neighbourhood, who does own a mill in the area prior to the war. Prior to the canal, you have a system where ships sail a little ways up the Niagara River, stop before they get to the whirlpool, and hire guys in Stamford to portage their ship and goods up the Niagara Escarpment and back to the river. You can keep doing that for a little while but eventually the volume of commerce will increase and the size of ships will go up, and the portage won't do the job anymore.

The nature of the canals will also change: Bear in mind that the current canal is actually the fourth Welland Canal. The original was a series of little wooden locks following Twelve Mile Creek from Port Dalhousie and on up the escarpment to the Welland River - it wasn't straight through the peninsula. Eventually a canal straight through the peninsula is probably inevitable, especially if future development predictably continues to lead to more and more massive ships which couldn't really navigate the Welland River, but there are significant butterflies in the development of Niagara - the shantytowns that turned into the various parts of Thorold may be somewhere else, though the development of a Port Colborne analogue is probably inevitable. Welland likely is too because it's at the juncture of the first Canal and the river, though its name may be different.

Even if you butterfly Merritt, you likely just get a DeCew Canal, and a lot less things in Niagara named after Merritt.
 
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