Watching boats from the Inn at Lock Seven? Our friends Jim and Louise gave us the idea.

You must have heard that ships are able to travel inland as far as Chicago or Minnesota.

But how do they get past Niagara Falls? The Welland Canal. Google tells me that over 3000 ships pass through the canal each year. It’s closed for the winter, roughly from December to March, when they do necessary maintenance. In the remaining nine months of the year, that’s 3000 ships in 270 days or on average over ten per day.

It’s a thin ribbon of blue on the map, more or less parallel to the Niagara River, ten or more kilometers west, given that the canal is fairly straight north-south, while the river meanders a bit.

That’s what’s so cool about a place like The Inn at Lock Seven.

It’s rather transparent in its purpose, a series of rooms close to the canal giving us a terrific view of the vessels passing nearby on the water.

Every room has a great view, looking directly upon the canal.

We saw the Bluebill, a 200 meter-long container vessel famous for having knocked out a railway bridge in Panama in 2020. And no wonder, when you see what the huge ship looks like up close.

At first it was high in the water, the bridge structure like a big apartment building. (not shown in the picture, because it was over 150 meters away).

Then –doing what they do in canals—it slowly sank lower as they adjusted water levels for the next lock, the massive thing concealed.

As it finally moved on you could hear its engine throb.

It’s shocking to see something so big up close that moves.

There were several ships, including one named the Beatrix, with the company name “Wagenborg” emblazoned on the side, ownership via Sweden. While the Bluebill went from right to left, or in other words, northwards towards Lake Ontario (and I saw online it had come from Thunder Bay earlier in the week, destined for Montreal the next day), the Beatrix went left to right or in other words, southwards towards Lake Erie.

I can’t imagine the complexities of handling the traffic, the bridges over the canal that sometimes open for big ships, the water pumped into or out of the locks, to enable so many ships to travel through, except to remember that our supply chain logistics sometimes depend on the workers manning these facilities. I’m grateful.

I saw that there are apps and websites offering information for nerds who want to drill down on each vessel, to know where they’re going, what they might carry, who owns them and lots more besides.

In the meantime while in Thorold I drove to a show at the Shaw Festival, reviewing The Shadow of a Doubt by Edith Wharton, roughly twenty minutes drive. While I love Niagara-on-the-Lake, the place Erika and I went on our honeymoon and several holidays besides, it has become expensive both for accommodation and the various shops and restaurants one requires to survive. While the Inn isn’t spectacular by any means, it’s reasonably priced, with its Spartan furnishings the tv, and wifi serving this nerd quite well, and the little refrigerator holding the food we brought along for our short stay.

Thorold offers some lovely alternatives. We had dinner at Karma Kameleon Gastropub. I had the “Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich“, meaning spicy and delightfully slippery as I dared to pick it up, while Erika had the lobster grilled cheese sandwich, plus local brews (mine by Muskoka) and coffee after. There were some cool desserts I was too full to attempt. We saw a couple of other intriguing places to check out next time: in September.