Welland
Welland is a city in the Regional Municipality of Niagara in Southern Ontario, Canada. As of 2021, it had a population of 55,750.
The city is in the centre of Niagara and located within a half-hour driving distance to Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, St. Catharines, and Port Colborne. It has been traditionally known as the place where rails and water meet, referring to the railways from Buffalo to Toronto and Southwestern Ontario, and the waterways of Welland Canal and Welland River, which played a great role in the city's development. The city has developed on both sides of the Welland River and Welland Canal, which connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
History
The area was settled in 1788 by United Empire Loyalists who had been granted land by the Crown to compensate for losses due to property they left in the British Thirteen Colonies during and after the American Revolutionary War.Tensions continued between Great Britain and the newly independent United States, and the War of 1812 broke out. On 19 October 1814, Canadian forces led by George Hay, 8th Marquess of Tweeddale, met an American raiding party, numbering approximately nine hundred, near the eastern edge of the present community during the Battle of Cook's Mills. After an intense skirmish, the Americans retreated to Buffalo, New York. Cook's Mills was the second to last engagement of the War of 1812 on Canadian soil.
The First Welland Canal was extended in 1833 to reach Lake Erie and has influenced development of this city ever since. A wooden aqueduct was built to carry the Welland Canal over the Welland River at what is now downtown Welland, and the area became known as simply Aqueduct. A lock to cross from the canal to the river and vice versa was also built. A small shantytown soon developed around the facility, providing essential services in what was a convenient stop-over location for travellers and workers on the canal.
The growing town was later named Merrittsville, after William Hamilton Merritt, the initiator of the Welland Canal project. This name is reflected in the name of the Merrittville Highway, which served as the primary north–south route in central Niagara before the construction of Highway 406. Welland gained its present name when it was incorporated on 25 July 1858. It became a city in 1917.
One of the few railway crossings across the canal was near Welland. Together with the canal, these two factors attracted the development of heavy industry in Welland. In 1906 the Plymouth Cordage Company was the first major industrial company to open a plant in Welland. By the 1930s, Welland was an important industrial city in the region and was developing rapidly.
In the 1960s, the city was starting to outgrow the canal passing through its core. The Welland By-Pass project, started in 1967 and finished in 1973, provided a new, shorter alignment for the Welland Canal by moving it from downtown Welland to the city's outskirts. With the completion of the bypass, Welland's east end was like an island between the new and old canal channels.
The City of Welland is working to revitalize the downtown core through an ongoing community improvement plan. Integral to the program is the use of incentives to promote revitalization and redevelopment. A report published by the City of Welland in 2013 said, "for over 10 years now, these programs have produced only very moderate uptake and development since being introduced." Other former industrial cities have grappled with similar painful transitions.
Government
The Welland city council is made up of 12 councillors, each elected in his or her ward. Each of the six wards in Welland elects two councillors. It is led by the mayor, who is elected at-large, by all the voters in the city. Welland's current mayor is Frank Campion.In addition, two regional councillors are elected at-large, to participate in the Niagara Regional Council. These councillors were George Marshall and the late Peter Kormos, who died in March 2013. Another representative of Welland was appointed to fill Kormos's seat since late May 2013, in order to represent the city on the Regional Council.
The city is responsible for fire protection, libraries, parks and recreation and secondary streets, but many municipal services come from the broader level of government, the Niagara Region. Regional responsibilities include social welfare, community health, and policing through the Niagara Regional Police.
The chief local political issue is the redevelopment of the downtown core, which has deteriorated in the years after the Welland By-Pass project. The Civic Square project has been completed after spanning the terms of three city councils and three mayors. The new building, facing both East Main Street and the old canal, houses the city hall and the Welland Public Library. The project is proving to be a catalyst for development, as several new establishments have been opened downtown and some businesses are expanding.
Welland is represented in the House of Commons of Canada by the Liberal Party Member of Parliament Vance Badawey, and in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario by the NDP Member of Provincial Parliament Jeff Burch, representing the Niagara Centre and the provincial ridings of Niagara Centre, respectively.
Demographics
According to the 2021 census conducted by Statistics Canada, Welland had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of. With a land area of, it had a population density of in 2021.In 2021, 87.0% of the population was white/European, 8.7% were visible minorities and 4.3% were Indigenous. The largest visible minority groups were Black, South Asian, Latin American, Filipino, Southeast Asian, and Chinese.
80.2% of residents spoke English as a mother tongue. French was the first language of 7.2% of the population, compared to 3.3% in all of Ontario. In terms of non-official languages, the most common mother tongues were Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Korean, German and Chinese languages. 1.5% of residents listed both English and French as mother tongues, while 1.2% listed both English and a non-official language.
62.4% of residents were Christian, down from 77.2% in 2011. 35.1% were Catholic, 15.1% were Protestant, 7.7% identified as Christian without specifying and 4.5% belonged to other Christian denominations or Christian-related traditions. 34.9% were non-religious or secular, up from 22.0% in 2011. All other religions accounted for 2.3% of the population, up from 0.8% in 2011. The largest non-Christian religions were Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism.
Industrial Migration of 1885
A significant cultural mix was established with the opening of the Plymouth Cordage plant when many workers relocated to Welland from the company's operations in Plymouth, Massachusetts were of Italian origin. To minimize the potential effects of cultural and language barriers, Plymouth Cordage sent four foremen to Welland: one was Italian, one French, one German and one English. The neighbourhood that the company built for its employees, now the Plymouth Cordage Heritage District, became the first Italian ethnic neighbourhood in Welland.
Today Welland's communities reflect francophone, Slavic, First Nations and Métis cultural influences.
Education
Like the rest of Ontario, Welland has access to four public education systems: the regional school boards are the Niagara Catholic District School Board and the District School Board of Niagara. The Conseil scolaire Viamonde and the Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir also operate schools in Welland.The Niagara Catholic District School Board operates six elementary schools within the city. The board also operates one secondary school in the city: Notre Dame, which offers Grade 9 through to Grade 12. Continuing education courses are also offered by the board at its Father Patrick H. Fogarty Learning Centre within the city.
The District School Board of Niagara operates ten elementary schools within the city and two secondary schools: Welland Centennial Secondary School servicing the western side of the city and Eastdale Secondary servicing the eastern side.
A campus of Niagara College of Applied Arts and Technology is located in Welland. The college offers post-secondary diplomas, baccalaureate degrees and advanced-level programs. From 1995 to 2001, the city was home to a satellite campus of the defunct francophone Collège des Grands-Lacs.
Economy
Welland, because of its proximity to the Sir Adam Beck hydroelectric station at Niagara Falls, was historically known for its steel, automotive, and textile industries. Initially, manufacturing firms were the biggest employers in Welland. The plants of companies like Union Carbide, United Steel, Plymouth Cordage Company, three drop forges, a cotton mill, and the Atlas Steel Co., as well as general manufacturing plants, had big influence on shaping early Welland. While recent years saw the end of Welland operations for several companies, such as John Deere which announced in September 2008 that it would be closing its plant and relocating manufacturing to Wisconsin and Mexico, businesses such as Lakeside Steel continues to employ residents.The Atlas Steel Co. was founded at some time in the 1920s. Roy H. Davis and partners bought the Welland plant from its American shareholders in 1928. Gun barrels were produced here during the second World War. It was for a time Canada's largest manufacturer of stainless steel. The plant housed a vacuum smelter line, necessary for the production of Titanium. The onset of the CanAm FTA, NAFTA, GATT and globalization brought decline, and subsequently the ownership changed hands numerous times: the Sammi group acquired it in 1989, followed by Slater Steels of Mississauga in 2000, who went bankrupt in 2003. The plant was finally torn down in 2007.
The Canadian branch plant of the Plymouth Cordage Company was started in 1904 due to Parliament's initiation of a 25% import duty on rope and related products. Plymouth, with roots in Massachusetts, moved to secure its business in binding twine, necessary to package farm crops such as grass, wheat or straw. The city of Welland grew up around the Plymouth plant, which was prior to 1904, farmland. The cordage industry was a victim of the harvester-thresher, which obviated the need for binding twine, as the threshing operation is now performed in a contiguous step immediately when the stalk is cut.
Welland's electricity comes from the Sir Adam Beck hydroelectric generation plants at Niagara Falls via Welland Hydro. Thanks to the presence of the massive plant, power remained on in over half of Welland during the 2003 North America blackout until rolling blackouts began the next day in an effort to provide power to areas that hadn't had it for nearly 24 hours.