Anyone who grew up in upstate New York probably knows the Erie Canal song.
It’s a ditty about a mule named Sal, written more than century ago, in a tribute to the days when barges with lumber, coal and hay – pulled along by mules – plied the 363-mile waterway from Albany to Buffalo.
Historians say that was the era that arguably built Buffalo and made it a major city, because of its location on the Great Lakes and the new connection to the East Coast, leading to its growth as an agricultural, shipping and manufacturing hub.
And Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is now asking why it’s not being celebrated more prominently this year, on the 200th anniversary of the opening of the waterway.
“There would be no City of Buffalo without the Erie Canal,” he said. “I don’t know what would be here, but it wouldn’t be Buffalo. We need to celebrate, because you only get one 200th anniversary.”
But instead, he said the bicentennial is merely being commemorated, while “some people are trying to downplay it,” because of what they see as the damaging impact that the canal and Buffalo’s growth had on others, particularly the Native American population. In particular, he cited the Waterway of Change exhibit inside the Longshed at Canalside, which was curated by and is part of the Buffalo History Museum.
“I think that was a conscious effort by some in our community who didn’t want to focus on it. It’s kind of sad,” Poloncarz said.
And it’s also a mistake, he added.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate,” he said. “I think we need to celebrate our history and also identify some of the issues in our history. But it is a day to celebrate it.”
Melissa Brown, executive director of the museum, agreed with Poloncarz about the canal’s impact. “It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the Erie Canal to the city, county, state and nation,” she said.
But she said it also needs to be looked at broadly and in new ways. She said that was a priority for the museum’s team of “historians and subject-matter experts,” who “prioritized the stories of people – their lives, their labor and their communities – within the larger story of this engineering marvel and its impact on Buffalo, the state and the nation.”
“History exhibits and heritage experiences give visitors a way to connect with the past – its achievements and its injustices alike,” she said. “What matters most is that anniversaries give us a moment to reflect. They don’t capture it all, but they can help us notice different sides of the story.”
The disagreement over how to acknowledge a key piece of local history is a microcosm of the debate swirling nationwide over how the nation’s history should be viewed, and whether certain parts should be celebrated, commemorated, criticized or castigated.
While there are greater efforts to be sensitive to minorities or to highlight non-majority perspectives, some fear that the trend can also go too far and erase all the positive in the process.
On the national scene, that’s been highlighted particularly by President Trump, who ordered a review of eight Smithsonian Institution museums to remove “divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”
Poloncarz, a self-described history nerd, is similarly disappointed in the Erie Canal commemoration.
“It opened up the West. There would not have been this mass migration of individuals into the Midwest without the Erie Canal. It helped create our country, and we have a very important role to play in that,” Poloncarz said.
That’s not to say there aren’t several commemorative events planned. Officially, the precise bicentennial is Oct. 26, although the county decided to hold its commemoration the day before, on a Saturday, to avoid a conflict with the Buffalo Bills game against the Carolina Panthers that Sunday.
Local celebrations actually pick up this month, with the Summer Send-Off and a day of festivities at Canalside today; the World Canals Conference held here through Friday; the National Heritage Maritime Conference from Thursday to Sunday; and the departure of the Buffalo Maritime Center’s Seneca Chief packet boat on its cross-canal journey from Buffalo to New York City on Wednesday to replicate the Wedding of the Waters.
“We have a lot of great things going on,” Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp. President Mark Wendel said. “We really look forward to engaging with the community and welcoming all these visitors to Buffalo.”
But the only other noticeable ongoing public program locally is the 2,900-square-foot Waterway of Change exhibit, which highlights the history of the canal. It also focuses extensively on the Haudenosaunee confederacy, Native American life, and how the building of the canal and subsequent development and population growth affected the Seneca Nation and other tribes.
“You can’t walk out of the exhibit feeling like it was a great thing for the community. It’s pretty negative, if you actually go through the exhibit and the description of what occurred,” Poloncarz said.
“The canal had its positive things, and also its negative with regard to the Native Americans that were here, and that seems to have been glorified in the exhibit,” he said. “It’s fine to have it, but it seems to have taken up too much of the exhibit’s time.”
Meanwhile, there haven’t been other major events or regular programs, nor is there even a banner sign to tout the anniversary, Poloncarz noted.
However, Brown said the bicentennial is being marked throughout the region with new study, exhibits, school tours, public programs and events, supported by state and local governments or private funds.
“Planning and coordination around anniversaries can always be more robust,” she said. “These efforts are complex and spread across many agencies and partners.”
And she said the feedback from guests, staff and volunteers on the museum’s exhibit “shows that inclusive storytelling resonates.”
“No single exhibit can cover everything; our goal is to invite visitors to marvel at the achievement, reckon with its reverberations, and carry their curiosity forward,” Brown said.
The county executive – who has been spending more time on weekends in the Finger Lakes, where he now has a second home – says other communities along the canal have made far more of the bicentennial than Buffalo.
“It seems like they’re doing more celebration in these small little towns that would not exist without the Erie Canal than we’re doing here,” Poloncarz said.
That’s a missed opportunity for tourism, he said, and a failure to recognize the importance of the canal to Buffalo. “We could easily be celebrating something in the city of Black Rock,” Poloncarz said, referring to the historic rivalry between the then-villages of Buffalo and Black Rock for the right to host the canal terminus, which culminated in Buffalo winning and emerging as the end point.
“If the canal had gone down the southern part of the state, there would be no City of Buffalo as we know it today. It would be something different,” he added. “Buffalo is here because of the Erie Canal, and we should celebrate it.”
So he directed county parks officials and the Erie County Historical Commission to step it up, and has talked with the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library about an event for children. He also called on ECHDC to do more programming for the October weekend.
He even suggested bringing mules to Canalside.
“For most children in the City of Buffalo, you’ve heard of Sal, but you’ve never seen a mule in person unless you’ve gone to the zoo,” Poloncarz said. “And here’s this historical figure, so to speak, as a result of a song, that needs to be celebrated, because there would have been no Erie Canal traffic without the mules that took the packet boats along the way.”
Reach Jonathan D. Epstein at (716) 849-4478 or jepstein@buffnews.com.
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Jonathan D. Epstein
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