"At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Upper Canada was just opening up for settlement, stone was frequently chosen for building new transportation and defense systems. Britain sent numbers of skilled stonemasons to the colony to work on such substantial projects as the British Naval Yards in Kingston (1820), the Rideau Canal (1832), and Kingston's Fort Henry (1833). Stonemason were also in demand for building the Erie Canal (1825), the second Welland Canal (1845). The next demand came during the building of the railroads in the early 1850s as stonemasons were sent out across the province to erect massive masonry viaducts and retaining walls."*
*Nina Perkins Chapple, A Heritage of Stone: Buildings of the Niagara Peninsula, Fergus and Elora, Guelph, Region of Waterloo, Cambridge, Paris, Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough, Hamilton and St. Marys (Toronto: James Lorimer & Co., 2007), pp 9-10.
The headpiece for this section is 24 Napier St., Dundas.