Steamboat Connections: Montreal to Upper Canada, 1816-1843

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

The subject of this scholarly labor of love is the origin and early
history (1816–43) of steamboat communications on the St. Lawrence
between Montreal and Kingston, the Ottawa River between the St. Lawrence
and Rideau Rivers, and along the raw and flooded reaches of the newly
created Rideau Canal. The author’s enthusiasm for his subject
propelled him systematically through notarial records, church registers,
newspapers, and county, provincial, state, national, and university
archives in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

From the archival thicket Mackey has extracted a richly textured story
that celebrates “connections”: between the various stretches of
water and the steamship companies that competed for the traffic they
generated; between stage and steamship lines; between American
entrepreneurs and Canadian opportunities; between steamboat owners and
steam-engine makers. Mackey also considers the connections between
economic, transportation, and business history and the War of 1812 and
the Rebellions of 1837–38; urban rivalries; the tension between the
Presbyterianism of New England and New York, and that of Scotland;
family formation and dissolution; the logical weaving of business plans,
and the capacity of the cholera to unravel them in a day.

All in all, Steamboat Connections is a riveting tale told by an
engaging raconteur.