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The taming of the turbulent St. Lawrence has occupied as many as 22,000 men and fleets of machines for four years. In cost, $1,090,000,000, the seaway and power project will likely stand as the world's most ambitious bit of geographical surgery until men tunnel under the English Channel; by a wide margin it is the biggest task two nations ever undertook in peacetime partnership.
Passage to the East. First white man to glimpse the river was the Breton explorer, Jacques Cartier, who sailed into the gulf on the day of the feast of St. Lawrence, Aug. 10, 1535. Cartier tacked his flagship Grande Hermine 560 miles up the narrowing river, hoping against reason to see it open out into the fabled Northwest Passage to the Orient. Instead, he found foaming rapids near present-day Montreal.
As early as 1700, French fur traders and missionaries detoured Lachine by way of a narrow canal just deep enough to float freight canoes. In 1908 Canada completed a series of locks and canals able to carry ships no deeper than 14 ft. from Montreal to Lake Ontario. Earlier, Ottawa and Washington had opened talks that were to drag on for decades, seeking a way for the joint development of the upper river for power and deep-draft navigation. Every President from Wilson to Eisenhower supported the seaway; so did every Prime Minister in Ottawa from Robert Borden on.
Pressure on the Dike. In the U.S. the seaway counted a formidable line-up of foes. The Eastern railways, the Atlantic seaports, the South, coal-mining interests and private-power producers all fought it. New developments gradually wore them down.
Midwestern steelmakers with heavy investments in Labrador iron ore needed a low-cost waterway to haul ore to their mills. Power-hungry New York State won permission from Washington to develop the U.S.'s share of St. Lawrence power at New York's expense. Power-hungry Ontario kept up pressure on Ottawa; so did prairie wheatgrowers and lake port interests. In 1953 the Liberal government in Ottawa politely bypassed a 21-year-old seaway agreement that Congress had refused to ratify, declared its intention to go ahead with the seaway alone.
That did it. With renewed prodding from the Eisenhower Administration, Congress rushed through the Wiley-Dondero bill for a full U.S. partnership in a seaway that would pay for itself in tolls in 50 years. Canada readily agreed to the new terms.
On with the Job. After the politicians finally acted, the engineers moved swiftly. Their job: to gouge out a ship channel with a minimum depth of 27 ft. from the harbor at Montreal, which is 22 ft. above sea level, to Lake Ontario, 182 miles to the southwest and 224 ft. higher. Midway they would tap the power potential of the great International Rapids.
In the province of Quebec they had to build 20 miles of new channel and two new locks to bypass Lachine Rapids, enlarge 16 miles of channel and two more locks at the rapids at Beauharnois. Sluggish, shallow Lake St. Louis and Lake St. Francis—wide places in the St. Lawrence River—were dredged to seaway depth.