Father and son die in horrific canal accident
The third-most common ethnic origin listed on the 2011 Quebec census is Irish, behind only Canadian and French.
Elzéar Lynch matched this ethnic makeup, the son of an Irish father and a French-Canadian mother — John Lynch and Emélie Normandeau.
The Lynches lived along the lower Ottawa River in several different towns on both the Quebec and Ontario sides of the boundary — Vaudreuil, Rigaud and Chute-àBlondeau, near where that waterway meets the St. Lawrence River.
This area is home to several different canals, all built in the first half of the 19th century by the British military in order to link up with the Rideau Canal, which stretches from Ottawa (then Bytown) to Kingston.
Following the War of 1812, tensions between Britain and the United States were still high, and the Rideau Canal project was intended to ensure continued contact between the military base at Kingston and the Ottawa River in the event that the Americans managed to cut off naval traffic along the St. Lawrence.
In 1890, at the age of 23, Elzéar married Caroline Brazeau, the 18-yearold daughter of Henri Brazeau and Josephine Clermont, in Prescott County. He continued the seminomadic tradition of his family; the 1901 census shows the Lynches living in East Hawkesbury Township, the 1911 census registered them in Seymour Township (today Campbellford), and the census of 1921 had them in Thorold, where they had moved around 1912.
Elzéar worked on the Welland Ship Canal’s construction from the project’s outset, and by 1925 was employed as a head carpenter. This was a very important position on the canal works because there was so much framing involved in both the concrete work and general aspects of canal construction. It could be dangerous work and always required a worker’s attention.
In 1919, in his capacity as boss carpenter, Elzéar was called to testify at the inquest into the death of canal worker Benjamin Price. Price had fallen from a height of 13.5 metres while a trestle was being built at the stone crusher.
The experienced foreman could not foresee that six years later an inquest would be called into an accident on the canal that would claim the lives of both himself and that of his youngest son, Leo.
During construction of the Flight Locks in Thorold, the canal’s engineers decided to use a metal, reusable form for the large volume of concrete that had to be poured, rather than have workmen build one-off wooden forms, which was the typical practice at the time. The metal forms were procured from the Blaw-Knox company, a Pittsburgh-based manufacturer of construction equipment and steel products.
On the morning of Saturday, Aug. 1, a crew was at work moving the biggest of the forms to Lock 4 from Lock 5. A manufacturing defect in a shackle attached to the safety rigging resulted in the shackle snapping under the load.
The enormous form slid sideways and then collapsed, leaving three men with serious injuries, eight in need of first aid, one so badly hurt that he would later die in hospital, and two men killed instantly by the hundreds of tonnes of collapsing metal. The two men killed instantly were Elzéar and his son Leo, who had been working just feet away from his father.
The two Lynches were buried in Lakeview Cemetery after a double funeral from the family home on Chapel Street in Thorold.
This article is part of a series highlighting the men whose lives were lost in the construction of the Welland Ship Canal. The Welland Canal Fallen Workers Memorial Task Force is a volunteer group established to design, finance and build a memorial to recognize workers who were killed while building the Welland Ship Canal. For more information about the memorial or to contribute to the project visit www.stcatharines.ca/CanalWorkersMemorial.