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A river of southeast Canada flowing about 1,207 km (750 mi) northeast from Lake Ontario along the Ontario–New York border and through southern Quebec to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The river was first sighted by Jacques Cartier in 1534; in 1535 he ascended it as far as the site of the modern-day city of Montreal. Long a water highway for explorers, missionaries, and fur traders, it is today a major shipping route.
For more information on Saint Lawrence River, visit Britannica.com.
Saint Lawrence River, the largest river in North America, was explored between 1535 and 1541 by French explorer Jacques Cartier. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Saint Lawrence, with its tributary, the Ottawa River, and with the Great Lakes, formed the main water thoroughfare from the sea to the interior of the continent. Explorers and missionaries, including Samuel de Champlain and Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle, set forth from Quebec or Montreal for the west or the southwest. Fur trading brigades left Montreal bound for Mackinac, Grand Portage, Lake Winnipeg, and the Saskatchewan and Columbia rivers. The combatants in the colonial wars, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812 each found the use or mastery of the Saint Lawrence waterways worth the fight.
During the nineteenth century, shipping developed on the Great Lakes as communities grew up about their shores and beyond. With the completion of a deep channel from the head of the lakes down to Lake Ontario, and from Montreal to the sea, a movement grew in the first half of the twentieth century for the removal of the only remaining barrier: the 182-mile extent between Lake Ontario and Montreal. The result was the Saint Lawrence Seaway, begun in 1954 and opened in 1959.
Bibliography
Bosher, John Francis. The Canada Merchants, 1713–1763. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Eccles, William John. The French in North America, 1500–1783. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998.
Mackey, Frank. Steamboat Connections: Montreal to Upper Canada, 1816–1843. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000.
In its upper course the river cuts through a part of the Canadian Shield; there, just downstream from Lake Ontario, are the Thousand Islands. Below Cornwall, Ont., the river widens into Lake St. Francis. Shortly after, it widens again into Lake St. Louis then descends through the Lachine Rapids to Montreal, head of navigation for very large oceangoing vessels. Between Sorel and Trois Rivières is Lake St. Peter. Below the city of Quebec the river is tidal. It gradually increases in width to c.90 mi (140 km) at its mouth. The river's principal tributaries are the Richelieu (linking the St. Lawrence with Lake Champlain and the Hudson River), St. Francis, Ottawa, St. Maurice, and Saguenay rivers.
The St. Lawrence River is an important source of hydroelectric power; one of the world's largest facilities is the Beauharnois power plant near Montreal. Agreements between the United States and Canada govern power distribution and navigation in the international section of the river. The river's valley is an agricultural region; potatoes, grains, hay, vegetables, and dairy cattle are raised. The most important cities and ports along the St. Lawrence are Ogdensburg, N.Y.; Kingston, Brockville, and Cornwall, Ont.; and Montreal, Sorel, Trois Rivières, Quebec City, and Lévis, Que.
Canals have been constructed around the river's rapids, making the entire river navigable; however, the upper part is unnavigable during the winter months because of ice accumulation. The many bridges that cross the St. Lawrence River include the Thousand Islands International Bridge (1938), the Roosevelt International Bridge (1934), and the Seaway Skyway Bridge (1960), all between Ontario and New York; the Victoria Bridge (remodeled 1898) at Montreal; and the Quebec Bridge (1917), near Quebec City.
River flowing northeast from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean. Ontario and Quebec, Canada, and New York state are along its banks.
| Saint Lawrence River | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Origin | Lake Ontario |
| Mouth | Gulf of Saint Lawrence/Atlantic Ocean |
| Basin countries | Canada (Ontario, Quebec) United States (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Wisconsin) |
| Length | 1,197 km (744 mi) |
| Source elevation | 250 m (820 ft) |
| Avg. discharge | 10,400 m³/s (367,328 cu ft/s) |
| Basin area | 1,030,000 km² (397,683 sq mi) |
The Saint Lawrence River (In French: fleuve Saint-Laurent) is a large south west-to-north east flowing river in the middle latitudes of North America, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. It is the primary drainage of the Great Lakes Basin. It is called Kaniatarowanenneh ("big waterway") in Mohawk. It traverses the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario and forms part of the provincial boundary between Québec and Ontario and part of the international boundary between Ontario, Canada and the U.S. state of New York.
The Saint Lawrence River originates at the outflow of Lake Ontario between Kingston, Ontario on the north bank, Wolfe Island in mid-stream, and Cape Vincent, New York on the south bank.
From there, it passes Gananoque, Brockville, Ogdensburg, Massena, Cornwall,
The river includes Lake Saint-Louis south of Montreal, Lac Saint-François at Salaberry-de-Valleyfield and Lac Saint-Pierre east of Montreal. It surrounds such islands as the Thousand Islands near Kingston, the Island of Montreal, Île Jésus (Laval), Île d'Orléans near Québec City, and Anticosti Island north of the Gaspé.
Lake Champlain and the Ottawa, Richelieu, and Saguenay rivers drain into the St. Lawrence.
The Saint Lawrence River is in a seismically active zone where fault reactivation is believed to occur along late Proterozoic to early Paleozoic normal faults related to the opening of Iapetus Ocean. The faults in the area are rift related, which is called the Saint Lawrence rift system.
The first known European explorer to navigate the St. Lawrence was Jacques Cartier, who sighted the Bay of Chaleur in 1534 and also claimed New France for Francis I. The land was inhabited at the time by the St. Lawrence Iroquoians. He returned to the area the following year. Arriving at the Gulf on St. Lawrence' feast day, he accordingly named it the Gulf of St. Lawrence.[1]
Until the early 1600s, the French used the name Rivière du Canada to designate the Saint Lawrence upstream to Montreal and the Ottawa River after Montreal. The Saint Lawrence River served as the main route for exploration of the North American interior.
The St. Lawrence was formerly continuously navigable only as far as Montreal because of the Lachine Rapids. The Lachine Canal was the first to allow ships to pass the rapids; the Saint Lawrence Seaway, an extensive system of canals and locks, now permits ocean-going vessels to pass all the way to Lake Superior.
In the late 1970s, the river was the subject of a successful ecological campaign (called "Save the River"), originally responding to planned development by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The campaign was organized, among others, by Abbie Hoffman, then on the run under the pseudonym of Barry Freed.
The river was also navigated by French explorer Samuel de Champlain.
Occasionally, the French name fleuve Saint-Laurent is wrongly translated as Saint Lawrence Seaway since it uses the word fleuve and not rivière. However, the word fleuve means a large river, which runs to the ocean or sea. There is no word in English that distinguishes this type of a river from others, and thus is appropriately translated by river. The seaway is a system of artificial canals and is called in French la voie maritime du Saint-Laurent.
The source of the North River in the Mesabi Range in Minnesota is considered to be the source of the Saint Lawrence River. Because it crosses so many lakes, the water system frequently changes its name. From source to mouth, the names are:
The St. Lawrence River is at the heart of many Quebec novels (Anne Hébert's Kamouraska, Réjean Ducharme's L'avalée des avalés), poems (in works of Pierre Morency, Bernard Pozier), and songs (Leonard Cohen's Suzanne, Michel Rivard's L'oubli). The river has also been portrayed in paintings, notably by the Group of Seven. In addition, the river is the namesake of Saint-Laurent Herald at the Canadian Heraldic Authority.
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more |
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| Geography. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Saint Lawrence River". Read more |
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