Plamondon Canal

Following the re-routing of the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway through Lac La Biche, hope for the future of the community was rekindled in 1921 with the proposal to build a canal from Plamondon Bay, approximately 5 km, to Plamondon along the Plamondon creek. 

The request for such a canal was sent to the Federal government by community leaders.  After being approved by the Department of Public Works in Ottawa, funds were allocated for this purpose. The main reason was that it would enable farmers and businessmen to ship their produce to the railhead and bring back merchandise from the village of Lac La Biche on barges.

This gave work to many and was a boom to the town.  First the equipment was freighted to Lac la Biche by train and loaded on barges and brought to Plamondon.  The canal was to be six to seven feet wide.  They dug with a steam shovel on a barge, and this went on for three summers and got to within a half mile from Plamondon when the money ran out and the project died a natural death.

However, because some of the residents believed that the canal was a flight of fancy and would end up being a folly they made an appeal to Public Works to use the funds allocated for the canal for a road instead.  Much to the chagrin of the canal’s opponents, the funds which had been allocated for the canal were not applied on the highway project.

Today little evidence remains of the “the canal that never was”.