From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson, co-hosting This Hour with Eric Grody, and our connection this hour was made in the 1780s when a group of settlers had an idea that sounds really a lot like the conversations happening today.

In 2025, we're talking about whether it's time to connect all of our region, city to city with a high speed rail system.

Nearly 250 years ago, you might swap out high speed rail swap in the word canal.

From the Hudson River, they said to the Great Lakes.

A chance to spur travel and commerce and development.

But it wasn't until 1817 that the New York State Legislature authorized construction of the canal.

Eight years later, and for our purposes, 200 years ago, the canal finally opened on October 26th, 1825.

Governor DeWitt Clinton presided over the official opening aboard a board called the boat called the Seneca Chief.

That name carries some irony, given that native communities saw the canal quite differently, but for much of the region, the canal delivered massive change and tremendous growth.

At the time, it was considered an engineering marvel.

40ft wide, 363 miles long.

It's easy to forget now, but the Book of Mormon could get printed only because the printing press could reach Palmyra by boat.

The canal is how Frederick Douglass North Star could reach Albany within a day, and it also played a role in Seneca Falls growth as the home of the suffrage movement.

The Underground Railroad also used the canal.

So much history there.

And this hour we explore not only the history, but the future.

We're wondering if listeners still use and think about the canal 200 years later.

The world has changed so much, and our guests are going to talk about those subjects.

We're going to talk about events coming up to mark two centuries.

There's an event tomorrow to tell you about, but a lot happening this year.

Let us welcome our guests now in studio with us.

Christine Darcy is historian for Rochester and Monroe County.

Welcome back to the program.

Thank you for being here.

Welcome in studio to Patrick Russell Walsh, executive director of Cornhill Navigation.

Welcome.

Thanks for being here.

Thrilled to be here.

You use the canal all the time.

I bet we do.

From May to October every day.

And welcome on the line with us.

I want to bring in Mark Ferrara, who's professor of English at Suny Oneonta, author of The Raging Erie Life and Labor along the Erie Canal.

Mark, welcome.

Thanks for being here.

Thank you.

Evan.

And Nate Harrington is a senior in the magazine news and digital journalism program at Syracuse University and project coordinator for Unlocking New York.

Hello, Nate.

Welcome.

Thank you guys.

So I gotta I gotta mention here Eric Brody is co piloting with me this hour and next hour.

And it's I'm thrilled to have you.

I've known Eric for years now.

Tell the audience a little bit more about your own background.

So will this a more come into play in the second hour?

But I worked, for a long time as a theater critic.

various newspapers, and then came upstate to teach at Syracuse University.

I live in Brighton, but teach in Syracuse.

a runner arts journalism grad program there.

And I've also been very involved with the project, which we'll talk more about.

And Nate can speak quite a bit to that.

More than 100 Newhouse students have spent the last year diving deep into the history of the canal and coming up with dozens, literally dozens of great articles about it.

You're smart kind of professor, because what you see is you've got maybe some knowledge in a subject area, but if you got great students, you're going to learn from them.

You learn what they're turning up, digging up.

I mean, that's we were talking for the program, some of what we were writing in there, the introduction comes straight from your students, doesn't end there.

Pretty much all of it.

They're great students.

Also, given your media sort of culture and criticism and writing background.

I want to start the hour by bouncing my my Seinfeld theory of the Erie Canal off you.

You ready for this?

Probably not.

Okay.

Well, probably.

That's right.

So, Eric, there's this idea of Seinfeld, the show nine seasons that roughly half the plotline plotlines would have been invalidated if cell phones existed.

You know, the the parking garage, they can't find the car.

They could have just taken a video.

Then the whole plotline is gone.

Or the Bubble Boy episode.

They're on the expressway.

They get two cars, get separated.

Nobody knows where the other one is.

One ends up in the middle of nowhere.

They don't have it.

And that's how we get introduced to the Bubble Boy.

So that's the Seinfeld theory of Seinfeld plots, as cell phones would have ruined half the plot, which I think you kind of agree with it.

I think that's that's a it's pretty fair.

My theory of the Erie Canal is you go back to when they were debating the canal in, and they never in the same way that cell technology has changed so much about modern life.

They would not have been prepared for everything that was about to change.

And again, that comes straight from the work of your students.

But it's the idea that we can use the printing press now to send materials down the canal by boat to communities, and within days or a week we can be sharing information.

We can be coordinating rallies and events.

Things that would have taken weeks or months or longer were about to change pretty radically.

And so all of the limitations of life we're going to change in the canal in the same way that the cell phone has changed our lives.

I think for the worse, the canal, probably for the better.

How do you how do you like the theory there?

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.

I mean, I think the canal, from what relatively little I know and most of the people here can speak to better.

you know, the canal was built as the economic driver, which it unquestionably was.

But those unanticipated consequence, I mean, you just never know what can happen until something like this comes about.

And I want to invite listeners, because obviously, 200 years later, it would have been hard for the people celebrating the opening of the canal in October of 1825.

It would have been hard for them to imagine a world where we're just not thinking of the canal as often, or as sort of in central terms to our lives and opportunities.

For a lot of people, it's sort of quaint.

I jog alongside it.

Sometimes it's there.

It's pretty.

My son has fished in it like it's nice, but a totally different mindset in many, many different ways.

200 years later and listeners, I'd like to know if you're still accessing, if you're planning to, to use it at all.

This year, we're going to tell you about events that are coming up.

Cornhill navigation will have a lot to say.

Christine's going to talk about events that are coming up from the history side of things, so you can share your thoughts if you'd like to.

Connections at York is our email connections at York.

You can call the program toll free 844295 talk.

It's 844295825526365 for call from Rochester 2639994.

If you're watching on the news YouTube channel, hello there.

You can join the chat there.

And I feel for a scholar like Mark Ferrara, who has to tolerate the host comparing the canal to the Seinfeld era.

But, Mark, how do you feel about that analogy there?

I mean, the amount of change that was about to happen to daily life with the canal was pretty substantial 200 years ago, wasn't it?

absolutely.

And so we're going to talk about the raging area, life and labor along the Erie Canal.

Christine, we're asking, Christine to get us started here with what is happening tomorrow.

And then throughout the hour, we'll tell you about events, because there's essentially events happening all the way up through the fall when we get to the official 200 year mark.

But what's happening tomorrow?

Tomorrow, Mark Ferrara is actually going to be speaking at the library.

He is author of the book The Raging Erie Life and Labor Along the Erie Canal.

So he will be speaking at the Central Library downtown in the in the abortion line building beginning at 11:00 tomorrow morning.

So that is free and open to the public.

For information, you can go to Rock City library.org to find out more about that.

That will also be live streamed on the library's YouTube channel.

So search up Rochester City Library, Rochester Public Library on YouTube to watch that.

Do you want to give me a grade for my Seinfeld theory of the Erie Canals?

Change?

Well, you know, I think that is absolutely true.

You know, a plus there, Evan.

Thank you.

you know, we cannot even imagine Rochester.

Rochester may not have been here today without the Erie Canal in the way.

The way that it is.

Yes.

You know, it's impossible to overestimate the impact of the canal on on the world we live in today.

And Syracuse has a pretty similar story, as I understand it as well.

I mean, that's, so much was about to change in terms of where development was going, where it wasn't going, what the opportunity was to grow.

So we'll we'll talk more about that coming up.

And Nate, you, not that I'm sorry.

We're going to get to Nate in a second, but let me ask Patrick, do you want to describe for listeners a little bit about what you guys do at Corneal Navigation?

Absolutely.

so Cornhill Navigation is going into its 35th season.

We have two public tour boats.

The Sam Patch in Pittsford and the River, which this year will be starting its season, for a week in Brockport and then in Rochester for the rest of the season.

And we offer over 1000 different cruises throughout the year.

We have, cruises that go through locks.

We have live music cruises.

We do, a sip and sail series, birdwatching, kids cruises.

We have a number of different things that are all on our website at Cornhill nav.org.

You can go there and buy tickets today.

All right.

let me start.

We're going to start with Professor Ferrara for a little bit of background, about what you hope the readers of your book are going to take and, and maybe can we start with this, professor 200, 200 years ago, there was no question that the canal was about to bring some real economic change and developmental change.

what do you think most people today, 200 years later, don't fully understand about those days and those months, in those years of change making that the canal brought to our region?

it's an excellent question.

Thank you.

I think there's a there's a lot packed into that question.

we have a tendency to look at the the best features of the Erie Canal when we look back, especially in a bicentennial year, and we recognize the great economic, transformations that happened along the canal corridor, small frontier towns, like Rochester west of Rome, are suddenly turned into boom towns.

commodities are moving, back and forth along the canal, connecting the Midwest to the Hudson Valley.

The price of moving goods along that corridor dropped 95% compared to overland carriage.

and all of those are amazing transformations we can add to that.

abolition movements that you mentioned at the beginning of the show.

suffrage movements, the birth of new religions, including Mormonism and spiritualism, and the obviously the canal turned New York City into an economic powerhouse, when it was a middling port, before the canal was built.

But I think what gets overlooked, and this is what my book is about, is the lives of the poor and working classes.

Who labored along the canal.

And it's on the their backs that American prosperity is built.

and so what I wanted to do and in the region area was to try to tell their story.

And so that includes, for example, the orphaned children we drove, the animals that pulled the boats along the canal.

Christine, can you add a little bit of context there?

What would you say are some things that you think as a historian?

a lot of us are not thinking about when we think about the canal in modern terms.

Yeah.

I agree with Mark.

You know, there was so much that went into constructing the canal and then operating the canal, and it was often people who have been marginalized that were marginalized at the time and have been marginalized in history.

You know, it was it was a very hard life along the canal.

You had, immigrant workers who were doing the hard work of digging the canal in horrible conditions.

I mean, consider going through Montezuma, the swamp, for example.

You had workers working in, you know, inches, two feet of water sometimes, getting sick, people dying of disease, hard work, people being hit by the rocks that were being dug out.

and then operating the canal.

You know, Mark's book does a really good job of talking about the young children and what their conditions were like on the canal.

Women, had a role to play in.

We talk about the canal as this wonderful economic driver.

And it was.

But we often neglect to talk about the toll that the canal and the canal labor had on the people who were were doing those jobs day to day.

You know, we know in this day and age it's very, very hard to get major capital projects going.

You know, whether it's the inner loop here or I-81 in Syracuse.

Evan alluded at the beginning about it taking eight years for funding to get authorized.

And I guess it could be for Christine or Mark.

Was was the Erie Canal kind of a tough sell at the time or what?

Did everyone instantly think?

Sure.

This is something we'd love to see cut through our state.

Christine, you want to start with that one and we'll turn to Mark.

Yeah, I will absolutely start with that.

You know, as as Eric just mentioned, it took years to get this off the ground.

It wasn't until DeWitt Clinton really started to embrace it, but there had been surveys, you know, decades prior to that, considering the canal.

the question was whether the federal government would fund it, and they chose not to.

And New York ultimately had to embrace it and fund it themselves.

And there was talk that it would, you know, that would be a money loser.

And, you know, ultimately, it turned out they were making money within a very short period of time.

But it was very much a hard sell.

Yeah.

You want to add to that Mark?

no, that's exactly right.

I think there's, famous anecdote that, you, Thomas Jefferson, was asked to support the canal.

This is early in American history when the role of the federal government, in terms of internal improvement or infrastructure projects wasn't really clear.

and George Washington had tried to build a Potomac Canal to connect the Potomac River to the western part of Maryland, and it ended up being a failure.

And so the idea of trying to do a 600, 363 mile canal across New York state, Jefferson famously called it, a little short of madness.

and I don't know, Eric, you know, at that point about all the years, it still feels like it takes a lot of years to build anything in government these days, that everything old is new again.

And, the other part that really feels immediately pertinent to this past week for me and I would ask, marked maybe elaborate on this idea is, you know, Mark, as he says, the book is not just about the history of the canal, but sometimes it's about the people who got get forgotten, which is laborers who are exploited.

Sometimes it's child laborers, sometimes it's what people are paid, the conditions are working, and sometimes people literally are dying in projects like this.

And, and, you know, sadly, that is not new.

But in the last week.

So much of the debate literally around the world about these tariffs has been about, well, can you onshore manufacturing, you know, what are your labor standards?

Is it fair?

Do we accept the world as it is.

Should we compete against that?

Should we pressure others to change?

And it just feels like, you know, I know a lot has changed, but it is remarkable how similar some of these conversations about just dismissing the people who are dying, the people who get cast aside for the fact that we want to have this iPhone or we want to have this car, it's tough.

And, Mark, why does history so often, you know, maybe forget the people who are doing the building, doing the labor.

Well, that's a very good question.

And they weren't even really part of the celebrations of the wedding of the water that are going to be recreated this year with the Seneca chief, that you mentioned.

I think there's quite a few reasons for that.

I mean, when we're talking about, prejudice against Irish laborers and immigrants who came into the country, a kind of tendency to, not remember people who left very little record behind of their lives on the margins, of the canal.

this would include women.

I have a chapter on black life, along the canal.

the record keeping and census keeping wasn't always accurate.

and I think it's also kind of inconvenient in the historic coal imagination of the United States, where we like to laud big, infrastructure projects like the Erie Canal or the transcontinental railroad.

That's kind of Yankee ingenuity.

and so in that mythmaking, if you will, I think there's a tendency to, forget the, the pain and suffering along the canal.

And keep in mind, there's no OSHA, right?

There's no there's nobody looking out for workers.

When workers were injured, they would be lucky to get any compensation at all.

and, the way that the economics of the antebellum period worked, it really required all family members to work in order to support, a family unit.

So that includes children, and women doing work in the house, maybe taking boarders, children out, collecting scrap, selling newspapers.

and, those lives, are a kind of inconvenient truth.

sometimes when we're celebrating, the great economic and engineering accomplishments that the canal represents.

In a moment, we're going to take Mandy and Brighton's call, which is going to turn us, I think, in the direction of what Professor Grody and his students have been working on in some ways.

So hang there for a second, Maddie, let me just ask Christine Mirsky.

you know, it is not a pretty history of honoring the work of people who've been exploited in this country, generally speaking.

And I, I guess as we celebrate or think about celebrating the canal this year, I think the Professor Ferrara's book is a good thing to keep in the back of our minds.

What do you think?

Yes, I absolutely agree.

And one of the things I've been encouraging as I'm working with our local historians, is that they consider these kinds of stories and try to incorporate the stories of your everyday laborers in the stories that they're telling about the canal.

So, you know, but also as, as Mark referred to, it can be very difficult from a historian's perspective, since these people did leave so few records.

So it takes a great deal of work as, as Mark has tried to do a to to really dig in and learn about these people you're using nontraditional sources and, and relying on looking through the lenses of the more well documented people.

let me grab that phone.

Call Maddie in Brighton.

Hey, Maddie.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Can you hear me?

Yep.

Go ahead.

Okay.

so I want to know if in the history of the canal building, there is attention being paid to the impact on native people in New York state?

and, the fact that the canal was originally known as Clinton's Ditch, and it's the same Clinton family as the Sullivan Clinton campaign that tried to wipe out Indians in western New York.

That's.

Yeah, professor, that's an excellent point.

I mean, as I've been working in deep in this Newhouse project, one of the many stories that came up involve the indigenous communities that that do view the canal very, very differently.

I mean, I think the Oneida Nation, which is just one of many, many nations, that were impacted, can point to 27 different treaties that had been signed and agreed upon and then promptly broken when they got in the way of slicing through and creating the canal.

so, I mean, I that is, I think, absolutely part of the story I'd love to hear from either Christine or Mark or Nate, because the 908 near the that's that I learned of that through the unlocking NY.

Yeah, actually let's start with Nate.

The Nate's a senior in the magazine news and digital journalism program at Syracuse University and project coordinator for unlocking NY.

what do you want to say about that particular set of themes there?

Nate?

Yeah, it was super important when we approached this project to tell these underrepresented stories in the Erie Canal, in Erie Canal history.

we have an entire section dedicated to, these untold stories or or forgotten stories of Native Americans who kind of got removed from their, where they were, several times in order to build a canal.

I know in Syracuse, the, heart of New Shawnee Nation were originally moved to around Onondaga Lake, and in the second Onondaga Lake was discovered as like to be this incredible place to produce salt.

They were moved again.

and I think it was important as we approached this project that we took incredible care to make sure that these stories weren't forgotten.

Forgotten in our project, as we produced stories, I think, Eric, until reading Nate's notes on this that you were sharing with me before this program, this is how much I knew about this.

Zero.

I had no idea of that particular aspect.

Well, because I think as we had, you know, as we got through the history books, which don't talk a ton, at least Pennsylvania, where I grew up, or I think Ohio, where you were, I mean, we know about the Erie Canal and we knew it was important.

but I mean, as we're all talking about, you know, the histories gets written by a very specific slice of those who were there and were affected by it and had power and had power, you know, and and perpetuate.

But, Professor Farr, can you elaborate on that particular point?

yeah.

So, I mean, I thought it was very important to tell the story of, Native American land dispossession.

And so I opened my book with a chapter on the decline and fall of Iroquois.

and I actually went back, quite a ways through treaty disenfranchisement.

and, the movement of the canal, which coincides with a kind of larger movement, which is the clearing of ancient forests.

So there's a there's there's a story, there's a human cost, the human displacement of indigenous populations.

But there's also a environmental story that needs to be told to that, these were, old growth forests that were being chopped through, and and as they started to be cleared, farms started to pop up.

And as land got fenced, that also changed the, lifestyles of indigenous populations who relied on having, you know, hundreds of acres in which they could, live and, and hunt.

and as the old growth forests were cut down and farms and fences went up, that made that kind of lifestyle impossible, so that by the time the Erie Canal is completed, you have, very reduced number of new Shawnee, in New York.

And when you do find them, they're living in square houses on farms, trying to learn a new way of living.

so this is an important part of the canal story as well.

Yeah.

Matty in Brighton.

Thank you for that phone call.

I really appreciate that point.

and, I'm I'm grateful, frankly, for, Professor Ferrara, for students who are helping us understand the history.

Because in our second half hour, we are going to talk about more of the events coming up.

And I know there's a lot of celebrating that they're going to be doing.

Dorothy called in to say in Rochester that she loves using the canal to bike alongside it, to kayak on it.

We'll talk more about opportunities to to do that and and to think about our history.

But I do appreciate this background.

I think it's important.

And it's another one of those in that long category of things where I never had no idea or just wasn't on my my radar.

That's a lot of a lot of history generally, but usually it's for, people in communities that have been exploited.

So, really, really great stuff.

Thank you, Matty, for that.

let me get an email that comes from Charlie who says, his first comment about the canals.

The condos in Fairport are as pricey as anywhere, all because of a ditch, Charlie says.

But he says it's more relevant to the discussion.

Please discuss how the Erie Canal changed the US and especially in New York City.

Previously, New Orleans was the US's major shipping port.

After the canal opened, the Midwest had direct access to New York City and everything changed, making it the center of commerce in the United States.

I bike along the canal frequently.

My son is cousins and brother in law biked the entire canal trail there when the kids were ten and 12.

Whoa, whoa, that's a long way to go.

so, Mark Ferrara.

I'll start with you.

He's talking about what happens to New York City and how shipping and commerce changed with the canal.

yeah, it's an immense, immense change.

New York was a kind of middling port, and suddenly it's it's a, international port, that shipping, grains, from the Midwest down the canal, and to the rest of the world and commodities are going the other way as well.

and keep in mind, there's all kinds of newspapers, that are being, you know, the city newspapers that are finding their their way into rural upstate New York.

so ideas are moving along this canal corridor as well as commodities.

so all kinds of, you know, part of the positive story of the canal is all kinds of reform movements, that start to pop up, in the 1830s, in the 1840s to address some of the kind of urban ills that you see a company, New York City, becoming, such a large and important port.

so again, if we're talking about the poor and working classes, we're talking about, Chanty live in tenement living, you know, life, life on the margins.

and interestingly enough, some of the social ills that we see in places like Five Points, down in New York City, do get replicated in small upstate New York towns, because of the number of transient, people that are moving along the canal corridor, so small upstate New York towns suddenly had to deal with, an influx of, you know, transient workers and indigent people, and, so with, with the prosperity, which brought economic gain and boons to the city and, and to upstate New York.

there's also this flip side that some of the, some of the things that we see with urban development that are, less glamorous and less welcome.

we see replicated along the canal corridor and some interesting ways.

And Christina did ask you, do you want to add to that as well?

I think Mark pretty much covered it.

Thank you.

Okay.

And I've got a phone ringing here, so we'll take more of your calls on the other side of this.

Only break that we're going to take coming up here.

We've got more emails to share and we're going to talk to Nate, and Patrick more about the various perspectives here.

You just heard Nate Harrington, a senior in the magazine News and Digital journalism program at Syracuse University, project coordinator for Unlocking New York.

And we're going to talk more about what they have been doing.

and, Patrick Russell Walsh is executive director of Cornhill Navigation, and they would love to see you on the canal this year.

Or really, not just this year, probably all the time, but, certainly this year as the canal approaches, 200 years old.

Christine McCaskey, historian for Rochester and Monroe County, is with us.

Mark Farrar, a professor of English at Suny Oneonta, author of The Raging Erie Life and Labor Along the Erie Canal, and my co-host Eric Brody with us, and we'll take more of your feedback coming right back here on connections.

Coming up in our second hour, we sit down with the playwright behind a show that's coming to Geneva this month called Pure Native.

It explores issues of identity, commercialism, capitalism, exploitation and native reservations, and a lot of it based on the reality.

Although it is fiction.

And we're going to talk about how those themes will interweave.

That is next hour.

Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Lakeview Organic Grain, supplying certified organic feed grains and crop seeds to northeast organic farmers.

More online at Lakeview Organic grain.com.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson, so let's, let's get some of your feedback here because we got a bunch and, and then we're gonna get back to the conversation with our guests.

we've got, I think, Tom and Brighton.

Go ahead.

Tom.

no, this is Harris.

Harris.

Sorry Harris got the wrong one.

I got I had the wrong line.

But anyway.

Harris, you're up.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

So, a this is a what if question.

The canal opened in 1825, and I'm wondering what would have happened.

The railroads started to be developed in the late 1840s, 1850s, certainly by 1860.

And if the construction of the canal had been delayed by, say, 20, 25 years, do you think it would have been able to be constructed?

It would have been, economically viable?

a good question, Christine would ask you.

Yeah, that is a good question.

And it's always hard to speculate on something like that.

You know, what we do know is the canal continued to grow.

They rebuilt it several times, expanded it, including with the Barge Canal, which is the operating canal.

Most of us know today that what took place in the early 20th century, in 1919.

So there were still uses for the Erie Canal throughout all of that time.

so, you know, it's it's kind of hard to speculate.

I think there could have still been a need for the canal, but it's a question of whether there would have been the the funding available, whether people would have still viewed it as in the way that they did earlier.

Mark Ferrara, anything you want to add there?

yeah.

we start to see railroads around, in the 1830s, actually late 1830s.

and the canal peaks, around 1855, in terms of traffic along the canal.

But it does continue into the 20th century, especially for freight.

So by the time the Civil War, by the time of the Civil War, a lot of the passenger traffic along the canal has has been replaced by railroads, and railroads.

And that's part of the reason my book focuses on, 1825 to the dawn of the Civil War.

after which time, you know, the canal changes, it becomes mostly a kind of freight canal until, the Renaissance that it's that it's undergoing today.

but railroads had an important advantage over the canal, and that was that they could move through the winter.

so the canal would close down in November or December and open up, in late April or early May.

so the fact that trains could, you know, move people and freight, all year round was a huge advantage.

And then probably the death knell for the canal was probably, you know, the highway system with, vehicular, traffic, in addition to trains.

Harris, thank you for the phone call.

Let's get Barbara in Brighton next.

Hey, Barbara.

Go ahead.

Hi, there.

just wanted to.

I know Christine will, add to this, just wanted to help folks remember that the Anthony.

Susan, the Anthony's family was aided by the canal part of their travel.

it was in 1845.

So that was a while into the canal.

But they arrived for Bentonville, New York, to Rochester.

And they, the father formed of, a farm in what was then considered gates, up on Brooks Avenue near the airport.

and that, of course, was when she was still young, in her mid 20s.

So she was not yet involved in all of the suffrage movement, but she certainly was, getting already involved with the abolition because of her Quaker roots.

But anyway, I just wanted to have folks remember that, you know, one of the what one of the specialties of the canal was that it brought one of the top civil rights persons along with, you know, Mr. Douglass as well, and also but, brought, Miss Annie and her family up to Rochester.

Barbara thinking.

And by the way, that's Barbara Blaisdell, who's, historical re-enactor you've seen Barbara as Susan B Anthony?

Probably.

And she's outstanding.

fair good points there, Christine.

Yeah.

Thank thank you, Barbara, for giving us the opportunity.

You know, I think this raises that point that Mark and Eric have also made.

The Erie Canal didn't just transport people and goods.

It transported ideas, you know, by by making transportation so much easier, you had, much more movement of people bringing different ideas.

So that did lead to religious movements, social, social movements.

and so, you know, we talk about Rochester often as sort of this hub of reform and that is largely due to the mix of ideas and mix of people who were coming in on the canal.

So that is really important when we talk about Susan B Anthony, we often talk about her later, later travels via train, which are pretty amazing to trace just how much she was moving.

But a lot of those early ideas and early, early what made ideas like those that Susan B Anthony was promoting possible were was the Erie Canal.

And as we talked about earlier, the movement of newspapers and other means of getting ideas out there.

Yeah.

Eric, I would love for you and Nate to talk a little bit about what you did with this project.

And because, again, you know, Barbara's point about Susan B Anthony is well taken.

You know, your students bring in this idea that, hey, Frederick Douglass North Star can go a lot farther now in a lot shorter amount of time.

And these ideas start to grow.

I wonder if you could talk a little about this, what you guys have learned here.

Sure.

And Nate is by far the expert on this particular project.

So every year Newhouse takes on some you know, so much of journalism is just reactive and just figuring out what happened an hour ago that they we decide to take a step back and look at something in a lot more depth.

one year it was the anniversary of title nine legislation.

One year it was about, the borders between New York and Canada along, you know, last year it was about misinformation and disinformation.

And this year, the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal.

Nate can speak to this better.

My guess is that was probably a little bit of a tougher sell to 100 plus Newhouse, writers, photographers, designers, data visual.

journalists coming from around the world.

My guess is it probably took a little bit of a learning curve to to establish that this was something well worth their time and expertise.

Is that right?

Absolutely.

I remember sitting in a pitch room with some other professors trying to come up with enticing pitches, some of which you see, bubble up in or in a final project, one of which was Mormonism on the Canal, which is an incredible story where Joseph Smith's family grew up and, landed in Palmyra, and then Joseph Smith, was able to use a printing press that came up the canal and later traveled down the canal, to spread his, ideology out west.

And.

What I tried to focus on when I was going to students and trying to recruit them, was that the canal is like only one aspect.

It what we really wanted to do was tell a slice, tell a stories about a slice of time so long ago that are still impacting things today.

one example that I used a lot was, showing them a map overlaying, I-90 and the old Erie Canal and the alignment line up almost perfectly.

And I think it's incredible to think about this piece of infrastructure that was built 200 years ago and how much it's still affecting, where we study at Syracuse University.

in, Eric, for you, you said they became the experts.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I'm just playing catch up now because, I mean, there are 30 some articles, you know, several, some of which are 2 or 3, 4000 words long.

I mean, it's a books worth of of material and verbiage about the canal coming at it from so many different angles.

And each time it was just like, I keep thinking like, can we get back to the well again and like, find yet another?

And it turns out, yes, we can.

They've done really stellar work.

Yeah.

And I really appreciate the point that you're making.

These are students from around the world.

They don't they didn't grow up with the Erie Canal like sort of in their backyard or knowing about it.

you asked them to kind of really get deep on something they had probably zero baseline of knowledge about.

And, these kind of historical nuggets are really important.

Although I'm sure Christine would ask, you would say, yeah, that's what we say every day of the year here.

Knowing your history, knowing your local history, it matters.

I did get a question via email if, historian funding is getting cut with what we're seeing at the federal level, has anything affected you in that way?

It has not affected me personally, although my office is in the library.

So we are, you know, looking forward to, trying to figure out how and if, imls cuts will if we just talk to libraries and museums last week on this program.

Yeah, exactly.

I am seeing I think you also you had several representatives from the museum community as well who are being affected.

I don't know yet.

You know, one of our partners is the Erie Canal National Heritage Corridor.

I don't know if they will be affected by this.

So, you know, there is a lot of concern out there.

We're also going into, several major anniversary events, including the anniversary of the American Revolution.

so, you know, wondering how this will affect our historical communities.

Well, that's something we'll keep following.

And before we turn our gaze to looking ahead to events coming up and ways that if you want to participate, you can definitely do that.

One other thing that kind of stands up for me, Eric, is, you know, whether it's Mark for our book or the work that your students have done, this is going to be a year of celebration.

But that backdrop that is being kind of given to communities through this history really does matter.

You celebrate it.

You see what the reality of something like the Canal is today, but you understand the exploited labor.

You understand communities that might have been torn up or treaties that might have been broken.

And, how do you describe to students the need to go into this kind of work without knowing in advance what they think they want to find open to anything that they do find good, quote unquote, good or bad, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, to Christine's part, I mean, knowing the history does help because then you can't.

But sometimes, oftentimes you have to learn something and then you have to kind of unlearn it or take a step back and contextualize it a slightly different way.

And for some students, they're doing that.

And then I think for others it's just like this is a completely blank slate, which is a mixed blessing.

You know, in some cases that that can be easier.

But, I mean, I often say that journalists are generalists.

I mean, you you often, unless you are lucky enough to have like a hyper specific beat that you get to just live in day in, day out, week in, week out, you're often like, okay, like this show.

Like today we're going to talk about this and then going to talk about something totally different in the next day.

And journalists learn that you just need to become kind of a serial expert on things or not.

Expert is way overstating the case.

But, you know, a little mini expert and serial curiosity, a serial learner.

Yeah, yeah.

And so and so this was a case where that is those are the muscles that typically get worked at a place like Newhouse.

And this was a chance to say nope.

For the next several weeks and months.

you're just going to really it's not going to be quite so much about breadth and a little more about depth and time to learn.

Yes.

Nate, is there anything that surprised you the most in this project?

Yeah.

I had the fortunate opportunity to work on work on this over the summer and digging throughout.

historical archives at Syracuse University.

when you're working as a journalist, a lot of the time you're trying to find that generalist information and you're trying to find the whole story.

something that continually surprised me was just the omission of details that kind of stood out.

I wrote a story about Syracuse's history with infrastructure, and a lot of, marginalized communities got looked over in that history.

And I know they were part of it, because I know there's a very vibrant, 15th ward here in Syracuse that got torn down through eminent domain.

But I think when Professor Brody speaks to going in-depth, that's really what we were doing here, was looking at these points of a mission in history and seeing if we could find the story there.

Mark Ferrara when people are ignorant of history, do you find that or when they are poorly informed about history generally of late?

Do you find that to be, you know, ignorance because of lack of education or almost hostility to our historic truth?

That's an interesting question.

I would frame it a little bit differently, maybe as an opportunity.

to, to shed light on, forgotten parts of the history.

So, I mean, I, I really, honestly feel that the canal is just this wonderful historical transformation that made New York the leading state throughout the 19th century.

And it's just amazing that it's still there.

It's still active.

You can still go from Albany to Buffalo in a boat.

You can bike, you can hike, you can kayak.

and I think that maybe the people who are hiking, biking, kayaking and taking boats along the canal might not know the full history of it, but it's a great opportunity to learn more.

maybe stop in some of the little towns along the way and go to their historical societies, go to some of the museums, pick up some of the excellent books on the canal.

and so I think a lack of understanding is often an opportunity to learn more.

It's not that they don't know it.

They just don't know it yet.

Yeah.

They're good, I like that.

I like that.

So a lot coming up here, we mentioned earlier this hour there's an event tomorrow.

Let's talk about that one.

And then let's kind of look ahead here.

So starting tomorrow let's look at the calendar Christine McCaskey.

What's tomorrow.

Tomorrow Mark will be speaking at the Central Library at 11:00 in the morning.

You can find out more at Rock City library.org.

But throughout the year, all of the communities in, in, in the county along the canal are planning a variety of things.

So, I've been working with all of the historians in our county.

We're planning a series of walking tours that will take place in, I believe, all of the canalside communities.

Some will be right along the canal, others will be in the downtown areas of the villages, where people will talk about the effect the canal has had on those communities.

you've got opportunities.

I know Patrick will talk more about Cornell navigation.

You've also got the Colonial Belle out in Pittsford, celebrations along the canal all throughout the year.

the highlight will really be in September.

The World's Canals Conference will be coming up in Buffalo on September 21st through 25th.

They'll be bringing people in from all over the world for this very large conference.

And the day the conference ends, they launch the Seneca chief and it'll come across, Patrick can tell you more about what's planned here in Rochester, but it will also be making stops, in Fairport and Pittsford as well.

By the way, my understanding is the Seneca chief.

By the way, that's the name of the boat that governor DeWitt, when it opened, was riding in in that inaugural voyage.

And this is a replica that's supposed to be right down to the tee, very, very specifically similar to what the Seneca chief was all about.

So the stage is yours.

What's coming up here?

Yeah, absolutely.

Buffalo Maritime Center has been working on the Seneca chief, for 4 or 5 years.

They've had hundreds of volunteers building it.

and they have reconstructed the boat that, Governor Clinton took across the state.

So when the canal opened, they took a bucket of water from Lake Erie.

They went across New York state down the Hudson, and they dumped it into the New York harbor.

And they celebrated the wedding of the waters.

they're doing something similar in 2025.

We don't love the idea of taking water from one body and dumping it into another body that has a whole bunch of environmental, issues.

But they are gathering water all along their journey, and they are planting white pine trees, along the, the trip.

And then the last one that they're planting in New York, they're going to use the water that they've gathered all along the state to water that final, tree.

So that, boat will be in Rochester on September 27th.

it'll be docked at Cornell Landing, and we'll have a wonderful celebration and a whole bunch of events that weekend.

It's also the Rock, the River waste, weekend for the city of Rochester.

There'll be a lot happening in downtown Rochester.

On the 28th.

The boat goes to Pittsford, and then later on the 28th to Fairport, where it will be for two nights.

Can people see it from the outside or can they tour it on the inside?

Yes and yes.

You can absolutely come see the boat.

they will be doing tours of it.

They'll have exhibits and information about the boat, and you can absolutely walk through it and learn more about how it was built and how it's important to our state's history and to our region's history.

And in terms of just accessing the canal this year, whether you want to be thinking about history or you just want to be on the water more, what do you want people to know?

Well, I hope everyone's thinking a little bit about history, especially as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the canal.

As Christine said at the top of the hour, the canal, influence on Rochester cannot be overstated.

It had impacts on everything.

And I'm so grateful to, Marc and Eric and, Nate and Christine for doing the research to unearth these stories, because I think they're really important and they're a part of our region.

I think the canal is a is a key part of our history, especially in Rochester.

And getting out on the canal is one of the best ways to experience that.

To learn more, if you haven't been on Sam Patch to go through lock 32 and raise up in the air 25ft, that's an experience.

I've never done that, really.

I've never done.

In May, you're coming out on the boat.

We're gonna make it happen.

It is.

I think that's common.

I think there's a lot of people in our area who have driven over the bridges and seen the Erie Canal and driven along for 90 and seen the old lock, and wondered why is there a lock on the expressway?

Yeah, we want to tell that story.

We want people to come out and experience the waters and see, to learn about the history.

Most of our cruises, give you sort of a brief overview of the cruise.

We have a lecture series called Unlocking the Past Speaker Series.

So we have a number of deep dives into different topics.

I hope Mark will come out at some point.

And Eric, you're certainly welcome to as well to talk more about the stories that you've unearthed, because I think they're really important to talking about the history of the Canal.

We've been working with the Mount Hope Cemetery to look at many of the people who worked on the canal and are buried there to tell their stories.

They have a great walking tour coming up for the bicentennial, and then they'll also be doing talks on both of our boats to talk about how that, how Rochester was influenced by the canal and the people who lived and died here.

Here's a note from Melissa I think you will relate to hear Patrick Dominic says when we have visitors from out of town, we love to take them to either Pittsford or Cornhill for a boat ride.

People are always amazed at this resource that we have.

I absolutely agree, I think this is such a sense of place for Rochester.

You can go anywhere in the country, almost anywhere in the world, and see the same stores, in the same restaurants, but you can only find the Erie Canal and the Genesee River here.

And to get out on those waters and experience them firsthand, I think everyone in the region should be doing that.

I just saw our email inbox and I'm like, oh no, there's so many.

I'm going to try it.

Here we go.

Deb in Webster says I'm putting a plug in for engineers who figured out how to build such a novel idea.

The Erie Canal, my great great uncle, Canvas White, was one of these engineers.

He was sent to the UK to walk their many canals and learn from what they accomplished.

He came back with the recipe for the cement that eventually held the canal together.

It solidified underwater, which was an essential characteristic.

Engineers learned as they went along.

No colleges taught them, and they successfully built a marvel of the time.

That is from Deb.

Is that a history that that you're familiar with?

Christine?

Oh, the engineering history.

I mean, some people consider the Erie Canal wonder as one of the wonders of the world because of the engineering marvel that it is.

I don't see why you have to bash colleges, but that's.

and Amy says the Finger Lakes also became known as the burnt over district, with the canal, bringing more people west and the new immigration brought religious movements and revivals to the area.

Amy is not only right about that.

We had a chance to talk about the burnt Dover district recently on this program.

That's a whole history and era that I was not all that familiar with in terms of its context.

and the Canal Central piece of that.

No surprise if you have emailed us and I just haven't got into it.

I'm sorry.

There's so much, so many great comments and interest here.

So you've got a chance, starting tomorrow to, engage more with the canal to learn more, to go out to these events and to see Patrick and the team at Cornell navigation, if you want.

Or of course, the the library tomorrow, 11 a.m., you can meet Mark and and learn a lot more.

Pick up his book.

So there's a lot going on.

And I just want to thank our guests for a really stimulating hour.

It flew by here.

So Mark Ferrara, author of The Raging Erie Life and Labor along the Erie Canal and a professor at Suny Oneonta.

Thanks for your expertise.

Thanks for sharing it with us this hour, Mark.

It was a delight.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

Wonderful having you.

And also on the line with us has been Nate Harrington, a senior in the magazine News and Digital journalism program at Syracuse University.

I think your professor is pretty proud of you, Nate and Nate.

But no, I'm not, because you haven't said yet if people actually want to see these 30 articles, where would they go?

They'll go to Unlocking New York, unlocking ny.com.

The website should be up in the next couple of weeks and we're going to have fantastic articles, multimedia elements, and photographs to go alongside it.

All right now I'm proud right now.

Now you're present.

You've done it.

You're past unlocking ny.com.

Patrick Russell Walsh, executive director of Cornwall Navigation have a great you're out there.

Thanks for being here.

Hi.

Thanks for having me.

Our cruises start Sunday, May 11th, Mother's Day.

Wonderful.

And Christine McCaskey, love having you here.

Historian for Rochester and Monroe County.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And if you want to learn more about all of these wonderful events, visit Rochester has a calendar on their website where all of the Canal Bicentennial events will be listed.

More connections in just a moment.

This program is a production of WXXI Public Radio.

The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of this station.

Its staff, management, or underwriters.

The broadcast is meant for the private use of our audience.

Any rebroadcast or use in another medium without express written consent of WXXI is strictly prohibited.

Connections with Evan Dawson is available as a podcast.

Just click on the connections link at WXXI news.

Org.