Quick links
portage road
DCHP-1 (pre-1967)
Entry from the DCHP-1 (pre-1967)
This entry may contain outdated or offensive information, terms, and examples.
1a
a road used for portaging boats and cargo by means of vehicles.
Quotations
1801
Whoever shall find the same and leave it at either the public houses on the portage road from Queenston to Chippawa, shall receive five dollars for their trouble.
1868
Grain portage roads . . . are called for in consequence of the break in lake navigation, caused by the Niagara Falls.
1952
At Fort Fitzgerald, Alberta, goods are transhipped on trucks and trailers over the portage roads to the head of northern water transportation at Fort Smith.
1963
The Rangers began the road system Simcoe planned: the portage road, or Dundas Street, from BBurlington . . . to . . . the Thames.
1b — Hist.
an overland route for York boats and other heavy boats, often equipped with roller-ways.
Quotations
1852
Owing to the shallowness of the streams, and badness of the portage roads over the heights between Lake Superior and Rainy Lake, the transport of goods requires to be performed in canoes, with much manual labor, and is, consequently, very expensive.
1897
It would be better if the traveller should portage here, the miners having constructed a portage road on the west side and put down roller-ways in some places on which they roll their boats over.
1928
The rotting logs of the old portage road of the voyageurs are covered by the high fill which forms the southern approach to the bridge.
1c
a path followed by persons making a portage (def. 2a).
Quotations
1831, 1290
To surmount these, a good portage road has been formed north of the channel, through a stony hard-wood tract, in which three small lakes are crossed.
1903
. . . the nearer or right passage led by a winding route to a rocky cove at the beginning of the portage road.
1961
. . . the main street of this community [Pembroke] was for some time a portage road.
2 — Maritimes, Hist.
a trail or path through the bush; a bush road, especially a logging road.
See: portage ((n.))(def. 8 and note)
Quotations
1815
There is an Indian footpath or portage road of eleven miles to the Grand River, which flows into the River St. John.
1902
Perhaps the best district for partridges and woodcock is that between Bass River andTabusintac, in the vicinity of the Miramichi highway, and the portage roads leading off it.
3 — Hist.
See portage railroad 1958 quote.
See: portage railroad(1958 quote)
Quotations
1916
This portage road promised to shorten materially the journey from Montreal to New York.
1946
It became a portage road across from Lake Ontario to the Georgian Bay.