Qualla: Kempische Vaart

Kempische Vaart: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KB72, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2015, Antwerp engineers replacing a bridge over the Albert Canal made a small archaeological discovery: when they dug down they found two walls running in parallel beneath the IJzerlaan, perfectly preserved, the remains of a canal that had been filled in eighty years earlier. They could have removed them. Instead, they reopened the gap, filled it with water again, and put back into service a short stretch of the Kempische Vaart - a canal that had quietly carried iron, coal, and pine wood for ninety years before being swallowed by its successor. The new IJzerlaan Canal uses pieces of the old walls and a remnant of Lock 17. It is a canal that refuses, even now, to stay buried.

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Image: KB72 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kempische Vaart: Why a Canal Through Sand

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hans Erren, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Campine - in Dutch the Kempen - is a stretch of sandy soil between the Meuse and the Scheldt that for most of recorded history grew almost nothing. Up to about 1860 it was open heath, peat moss, and oak forest, sparsely populated because the ground would not feed the people. ...

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Image: Hans Erren | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kempische Vaart: Opening the Land

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit FrDr, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first stretch, from Bocholt to a place called Blauwe Kei, opened on 22 August 1844 - twenty-seven kilometers of new water cut through sand. Two years later the canal reached Herentals, with eleven locks bringing barges down the gentle slope toward the Scheldt basin. By 1859 t...

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Image: FrDr | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kempische Vaart: Horses on the Towpath

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michiel Hendryckx, Public domain. An account from 1880 describes the daily life of the canal with the precision of someone who walked beside it. The towpaths along both banks were at least 1.5 meters wide, surfaced with gravel, busy from dawn. Most barges were pulled by horses. Smaller boats of 50 to 70 tons were...

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Image: Michiel Hendryckx | Public domain

Kempische Vaart: Politics of Water

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 3.0. The irrigation project that justified the canal turned into a quiet political scandal. A small group of landowners around Barthélémy de Theux de Meylandt - a few dozen men in all - had acquired most of the newly fertile Campine and lobbied the government to send them as much wate...

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Image: Paul Hermans | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kempische Vaart: Replacement and Memory

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit G.Lanting, CC BY 3.0. By the 1920s, Belgian planners feared Rotterdam would steal Liège's coal traffic if a new Dutch canal could carry 2,000-ton barges directly to the Meuse. They proposed the Albert Canal - bigger, straighter, on Belgian soil. It opened in 1939 and ate the Kempische Vaart from both ...

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Image: G.Lanting | CC BY 3.0