It flows from its source, a Drainage Basin just south of Hamilton, Ontario to meet the Niagara River.

Like many other places in Niagara, it was renamed by John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada in 1792.

John Reilly, of Stamford Township (present-day Niagara Falls), settled in Wainfleet in 1806.

After meeting Sarah, the daughter of John Brown of Pelham Township, Patrick O'Reilly felled a couple of very tall trees across the River to shorten his journey to see her.

This canal quickly turns an open-cut hydropower channel through the city of Niagara Falls on its way to the Sir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Generating Stations in Queenston.