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A major bottleneck is the closed Welland Canal in Ontario.

The Trinidad was built as a canal-going boat in 1867, carrying coal and iron from the place where it was made, Oswego, New York, across the Welland Canal connecting Lakes Erie and Ontario, onward to Chicago and Milwaukee, where the boat picked up grain to take back to Oswego.

I grew up in St. Catharines, where there are all these leftover bits of the Welland Canal — the canal went through four different routes through time.

The two vessels, the Alanis and the Florence Spirit, were heading in opposite directions along Ontario’s Welland Canal, a shipping lane that connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

It will travel through Canada’s Welland Canal to Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Seaway, then down the Atlantic Coast to its homeport in Mayport, Florida.