The phrase "dig a canal" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when referring to the process of excavating a man-made waterway, either for navigational or irrigation purposes. For example: The engineers worked hard to dig a canal that connected the two rivers.
You dig a canal, your expensive workers (specially imported from nonmalaria zones) drop like flies.
The company had not even told the villagers that it was going to dig a canal across their land.
If you wanted to erect a pyramid, dig a canal, fight a war, or harvest a crop, you chose the fittest, healthiest, strongest people you could find.
A French company, which had tried unsuccessfully to dig a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, was eager to sell its right-of-way to the United States.
The Marine Corps had also helped carve out a new Central American country, Panama, in exchange for rights to dig a canal providing a trade route to Asia — and the United States invaded Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico and elsewhere.
In 1340 the town received permission to dig a canal to the Schie (another tributary of the New Meuse River), and it became the major port of the province.
It begins with digging a canal from the sea.
As early as the 1840s the British thought about digging a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, but were deterred by the hostility of the politics and geography.
The avalanche late Friday endangered construction workers who were digging a canal in Aobamba to divert water from a swollen river.
Engineers dug a canal to reverse the flow in 1900, sending a pungent hello from the citizens of Chicago downstream toward the Mississippi River and St . Louis
For a start, they have dug a canal from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, and use its final falls for hydro-power, enabling them to employ electric ploughs, instead of the draught cattle that they first planned to import.
