Saint Lawrence River

Saint Lawrence River
Map of the St. Lawrence/Great Lakes Watershed
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 international boundary between Ontario, Canada, and the U.S. state of New York.

Geography

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, Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Quebec City before draining into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the largest estuary in the world. It runs 3,058 kilometers (1,900 mi) from the furthest headwater to the mouth (1,197 kilometers or 744 mi from the outflow of Lake Ontario). The furthest headwater is the North River in the Mesabi Range at Hibbing Minnesota. Its drainage area, which includes the Great Lakes and hence the world's largest system of fresh water lakes, has a size of 1.03 million square kilometers (390,000 sq mi). The average discharge at the mouth is 10,400 cubic metres per second (367,000 cu ft/s).

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.

Saint Lawrence River between Quebec City (seen at left) and Lévis (seen at right). The Île d'Orléans appears further in the center.

History

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. The river was also navigated by French explorer Samuel de Champlain.

Map of 1543 showing Cartier's discoveries.

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 virtually impassible 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. The Seaway was officially opened on 26 June 1959 by Queen Elizabeth II (representing Canada) and President Dwight D. Eisenhower (representing the United States of America).

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.

Names

Saint Lawrence River along the New York-Ontario border

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:

• North River
• Saint Louis River
• Lake Superior
• Saint Marys River
• Lake Huron
• Saint Clair River
• Lake Saint Clair
• Detroit River
• Lake Erie
• Niagara River
• Lake Ontario
• Saint Lawrence River

External links

All links Retrieved December 21, 2007.

• Regional Geography of the St. Lawrence River
• St. Lawrence Parks Commission (Ontario)
• Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System
• Safe Passage: Aids to Navigation on the St. Lawrence — Historical essay, illustrated with drawings and photographs
• St. Lawrence River Live Webcam
• International Saint Lawrence River Board of Control

Credits

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