(From the French of Louis-Honoré Frechette)

Majestic moves the mighty stream and slow,
Till from that false calm's semblance, suddenly,
Wild and with echoes shaking earth and sky,
The huge tide plunges in the abyss below,
— It is the cataract! from whose thunderous ire
The wild birds flee in terror far away —
From that dread gulf when with her scarf of fire
The rainbow sits above the torrent's sway!
Earth quakes, for sudden that vast arching dome
Of green is changed to hills of snow-white foam,
That seethe and boil and bound in tameless pride.
Yet this Thy work, O God, Thy law fulfils,
And while it shakes the everlasting hills,
It spares the straw that floats upon its tide.

Source: Rose-Belford's Canadian Monthly and National Review, July 1881, vol. 7, no. 1. Toronto: Rose-Belford Publishing Co., 1881. p. 26

View the poem on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website

The Toronto Power Plant was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by architect E.J. Lennox, and is built of Indiana Limestone. It started producing power in 1906. In 1922 it was purchased by Ontario Hydro, and produced electricity until it was decommissioned in 1974. Since 2007 it has been owned by the Niagara Parks Commission. Suggestions for redeveloping the power plant have included a museum, a hotel, and condominiums, none of which have come to fruition. If you go to the river at the north end of the building you will get a good view of the scow in the river.

The Toronto Power Plant is a national historical site. Click here to see the information in the register