St. Catharines Ontario

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St. Catharines

St. Catharines, "The Garden City" and county seat of Lincoln county is located in the midst of the orchards of the Niagara Peninsula. It was founded by Loyalists about 1790, was incorporated as a town in 1845 and as a city in 1876. Its growth and development have been closely associated with the Welland Canals, the first of which was built in 1829, and with the development of electrical energy at Niagara Falls which is only twelve miles distant. Other towns are also associated with the canal and practically continuous with St. Catharines. Port Dalhousie at the Lake Ontario terminal of the old Welland Canal is a well-known lakeside resort, connected with Toronto by regular steamship service.

Merritton is a small manufacturing town on the slopes of the Niagara escarpment while Thorold, slightly larger, sits upon the brow of the escarpment, over 300 feet above Lake Ontario. At this point the Welland Canal climbs the face of the slope by the Twin Flight Locks which have an aggregate lift of 1391/2 feet. St. Catharines and its satellite towns constitute an important industrial area producing automobile parts and machinery of all kinds, electrical apparatus and supplies, pulp and paper, tools, hardware, abrasives, wines and canned goods.

In 2006 the St. Catharines urban area had a population of 390,317, including the city itself (131,989), Thorold, Merriton, Port Dalhousie and the urbanized parts of the townships of Grantham and Thorold. It constitutes one of the rapidly expanding sections of the important conurbation around the western end of Lake Ontario.