St. Catharines.

St. Catharines sits on the south shore of Lake Ontario where Twelve Mile Creek reaches the lake at Port Dalhousie and the present (fourth) Welland Canal cuts through the city from the lake up the Niagara Escarpment.

Locks 1, 2, and 3 are in St. Catharines, and the St.

Catharines Museum & Welland Canals Centre at Lock 3 has an observation deck where visitors watch ocean ships transit the lock. The 45 km Welland Canals Parkway Trail starts at Lock 3 and runs paved alongside the canal to Lake Erie at Port Colborne — the northern anchor of the 140 km Greater Niagara Circle Route.

Above the Escarpment, Morningstar Mill at DeCew Falls is a late-19th-century working grist mill on Twelve Mile Creek operated by the City of St. Catharines, and the Bruce Trail's Niagara Section runs past Brock University and DeCew Falls into Short Hills Provincial Park (660.55 ha, 23+ km of trails).

Port Dalhousie is the heritage harbour district — the original First Welland Canal terminus, with Lakeside Park's sand beach, the 1898–1905 Lakeside Park carousel, and the Port Dalhousie Range Front and Range Rear lighthouses on the pier — and the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta has been held annually on Martindale Pond since 1903. St.

Catharines is on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and the Anishinaabe, including the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.