Port Colborne is a city in Ontario, Canada that is located on Lake Erie, at the southern end of the Welland Canal, in the Niagara Region of Southern Ontario. The original settlement, known as Gravelly Bay, dates from 1832 and was renamed after Sir John Colborne, a British war hero and the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada at the time of the opening of the (new) southern terminus of the First Welland Canal in 1833. The city's population in 2021 was 20,033.
Former bank building on West Street in Port Colborne
Canal Days 2019
Port Colborne Historical and Marine Museum
Welland Canal in Port Colborne
Lake Erie is the fourth-largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and also has the shortest average water residence time. At its deepest point Lake Erie is 210 feet (64 m) deep, making it the only Great Lake whose deepest point is above sea level.
NOAA satellite image of Lake Erie from July 7, 2023. Light green swirls are algae bloom on the western edge of the lake.
Lake Erie on May 28, 2022, taken from the International Space Station
North shore in mid-December 2014
Walk in Water, built in Buffalo, was the first steamship on Lake Erie. Picture c. 1816.