File:20150707 - 21 - Sault Ste. Marie Canal National Historic Site, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. - "The Lock in Action".jpg

English: A tour boat passes through the reconstructed lock in the Sault Ste. Marie Canal in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, as seen in July 2015. The lock seen here opened to boats in 1998; it's fully enclosed within the canal's original one, which was decommissioned in 1987 after almost a century in service due to structural failure. The canal itself stretches about a mile in length between Whitefish and Saint Mary's Islands, and was built in 1895 to replace an earlier facility that had been destroyed in the War of 1812. A smaller, more northerly alternative to the Soo Locks that lies fully within Canadian territory, the impetus for the canal's construction was an 1870 incident in which Colonel Garnet Wolesley of the British imperial army, in charge of an expedition to Manitoba to quell the ongoing Red River Rebellion, was refused passage through the other canal by American authorities who were angered by his support for the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War.