Canada is famous for the fresh water contained in the lakes and rivers that define great expanses of its landscape. Some of Canada's most famous scientists, biologists, geologists, and engineers have received global fame and recognition for their attempts to control and utilize these water resources. One of these was George Chaffey, who made his mark, first in Canada, then internationally in both the United States and Australia.

Born in 1848, George was the eldest child of George Chaffey and Ann Marie Leggo of Brockville, Canada West (Ontario). George Chaffey Sr. had established a shipbuilding operation in Brockville before venturing to Kingston in 1859. The precocious George Jr. attended the esteemed Kingston Grammar School for only a short time. His first love, engineering, could not be satisfied in school, therefore, by the age of 14 he was apprenticed as a marine engineer on Lake Ontario steamships. George then learned administrative skills in Toronto at the bank of his Uncle Benjamin Chaffey. There in 1869 he married Annette, the only daughter of Thomas McCord, the city chamberlain. In the decade of the 1870s, he formed, with his father, a partnership that specialized in building shallow-draught steamers for the Great Lakes and Ohio River trade.
 

William Chaffey, viewed here in 1886, although identified with his older brother in developing the San Bernardino Valley in Southern California, is perhaps better known in South Australia, where today he is looked upon as the father of irrigation in Australia’s Murray River Valley. [Photo courtesy Ontario City Library, California/Model Colony Room Collection]

In 1878, George Sr. was enticed to join a Canadian settlement in Riverside, California, where the Santa Ana River irrigation scheme had earlier been established. George Jr. followed a younger brother, William Benjamin (1856-1926) to the settlement in 1880, and they formed a partnership based on the success they had witnessed within the irrigation scheme. They purchased land and water rights on the Cucamonga Plain (presently in San Bernardino County), designed extensive irrigation colonies, and planned towns at Etiwanda and Ontario based on the sale of blocks of land serviced by a mutual non-profit irrigation company. Their vigorous plans included innovative techniques in irrigation management: their model colonies were featured at the World’s Fair in St. Louis in 1902. George also invested in electric lighting and telephones in California, and as president and joint engineer of the Los Angeles Electric Company, he made the southern California city the first in the United States to be lighted by electricity.

In 1885, a future Prime Minister of Australia, Alfred Deakin, chairman of a royal commission on water supply in Victoria, Australia, visited Ontario, California, and met with the Chaffeys. Excited by the challenge of droughts and deserts on the other side of the Pacific, George visited Melbourne in 1886, hastily told William to sell their California interests, and made plans for huge irrigation colonies in the Murray River valley at Mildura in Victoria and at Renmark in South Australia. The Chaffeys ran into serious problems trying to plant an individualist Californian model in the deserts of Australia, but these colonies eventually were successful and the brothers today are considered largely responsible for the development of Australia’s fruit industry.

Encumbered by debts and royal commissions (Chaffey Brothers Limited went into liquidation in 1895), George Chaffay left Australia in 1897, returning to California to invest in subdivision ventures near Los Angeles, irrigation projects, and banking partnerships, the latter with his son Andrew. One of George Chaffey’s greatest accomplishments was diverting the waters of the Colorado River to irrigate a portion of the desert he named Imperial Valley, today one of the richest agricultural areas of the western United States.
 

Chaffey College, ONtario, California, as it appeared in 1887. Originally a satellite campus of the University of Southern Califronia and founded by George Chaffey in 1882, it first opened for classes in 1885. [Photo, courtesy Ontario City Library, California/Model Colony Room Collection]

In an article, “Brockville Boys at Home and Abroad,” published in 1914 in the Brockville Recorder, the reporter editorialized: “Thirty years ago, a stretch of desert, covered by cactus and sagebrush, inhabited only by quail, jackrabbits and their kind: today the beautiful, smiling town of Ontario, hundreds of freight cars bearing away the golden harvests of the orchards and the product of the town’s factories. Ontario is the ‘model colony’ – the pride not alone of San Bernardino County, but all of Southern California. How was it done? Irrigation and enterprise. And who did it – the Chaffey brothers, Brockville boys.”

George Chaffey was a pioneer in agricultural technology, designing irrigation systems that altered the landscapes and prospects of Pacific rim settlements in both California and Australia. He and his younger brother were innovators whose far-reaching efforts made possible the agricultural revolution that opened vast arid areas for agriculture and allowed food to be grown throughout the year and transported to areas that could not sustain year-round growth. He grew up fascinated with the study of engineering on the lush north shore of Lake Ontario and is credited, along with his brother William, with founding several communities in some of the driest regions of the world, the most important of which are Ontario, Mildura, and Renmark. William, who remained in Australia until his death in 1926, is remembered as an Australian pioneer. Statues of him stand today in both Renmark and Mildura. George died in Ontario, California, in 1932, one of the most significant planners and developers in American west coast history. It is fitting that the Chaffey name survives in Ontario, Canada, at a lockstation located on one of the greatest engineering achievements in its day, the Rideau Canal. Chaffey’s Locks was named for Samuel, a great-uncle of George and William.

Larry Turner