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The Great River One of the world's storied waterways, the St. Lawrence lays open the heart of the continent by Wynne Thomas |
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MY JOURNEY BEGINS where the river ends. The St. Lawrence, Canada's great waterway, issues from the eastern end of Lake Ontario and flows in a northeasterly direction past Montreal and Quebec City to empty into the Gulf of St. Lawrence near Sept-Îles, Que.It is not a particularly long river by international standards. It is not even Canada's longest. With a total length of 1,197 kilometres, it falls far short of the western Arctic's Mackenzie River, which, at more than 4,000 kilometres, is the second longest river in North America. But other statistics speak to the stature of the St. Lawrence. Near the western tip of Anticosti Island (where a royal proclamation of 1763 decreed the river ends), it is more than 100 kilometres wide. Its drainage basin covers more than a million square kilometres, of which half are in the United States. It discharges water into the Gulf of St. Lawrence at a rate of more than 10,000 cubic metres a second. And it provides Canada with a crucial major riverine passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the heart of North America. So I am starting at the river's mouth, at Port Cartier, Que., a short distance along the north shore from Sept-Îles. Port Cartier is a bustling place, its docks surrounded by minimountains of iron-ore pellets, and is flanked on one side by an enormous grain elevator and on the other by an equally large iron-ore loader. Ships from the four corners of the globe come and go at all hours of the day and night. This evening, a fully loaded grain carrier, the Bao Chang, is leaving for the Far East. It dwarfs two small but powerful tugboats that resemble scurrying sheepdogs as they carefully manoeuvre the carrier out of the harbour and into the river. Another Far Eastern vessel is anchored midstream, awaiting the arrival of immigration officials, who will clear the crew prior to docking. And one of the world's largest ore carriers, the Saar Ore from Hamburg, Germany, is getting set to sail. I have just boarded the Algocape, one of 23 bulk carriers owned and operated by the Algoma Central Corporation, and among the 80 or so similar stretched vessels – "lakers," as they are known in the business – that together account for a significant proportion of the waterborne commerce of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. More than 200 metres long and each fitted with six or so cavernous holds, these ships are ideally suited to the bulk transportation of the types of cargo that are most available from the region's ports: grain from the Prairies destined for Eastern Canada; Labrador iron ore headed for the steel mills of central Ontario and the American Midwest; soybeans from Alberta bound for Quebec City and Port Cartier; salt from the Maritimes destined for points throughout the Great Lakes; and the occasional more exotic consignment, such as sugar and molasses from the West Indies, headed for Toronto. The Algocape has spent four days in Port Cartier, the first half of its stay devoted to unloading the 26,000 tonnes of dried peas that it had carried from Thunder Bay, Ont., near the head of Lake Superior (it is coincidence, the ship's cook assures me, that French pea soup appears on the menu for lunch), and the second half to taking on its new cargo, 26,000 tonnes of iron-ore pellets and concentrate for delivery to a steel plant in Hamilton, Ont. Unaided by tugs, the Algocape slips out of the harbour on a rising tide shortly after midnight. Here at Port Cartier, where the river is still more than 100 kilometres wide, the water level rises no more than two and a half metres between low and high tide. But as we travel west, the river begins to narrow, so that by the time we reach Tadoussac, Que., 300 kilometres away at the mouth of the Saguenay River, its width will have shrunk to 10 kilometres, while the difference in height between low and high tide can be more than four metres. It will take us the best part of 12 hours to reach Tadoussac; such is the strength of the tidal crest as it forces its way up the river that it takes little more than one hour to make the journey. In travelling westward up the mighty river from the gulf, we are, of course, retracing the route of the early European explorers. The first white man to sail up the St. Lawrence is said to have been Jacques Cartier (Vikings may have made part of the journey). Like many of his fellow explorers, he was searching for a route to Asia. Cartier's expedition left the French port of Saint Malo in three ships on May 19, 1535, and arrived in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in July. The gulf was familiar territory to Cartier, who had visited it the previous year, but now he pushed on up the river itself, coming upon the mouth of a second great river, which opened into the St. Lawrence from the north. This was the Saguenay. As he pursued his westward path, Cartier found that the shores of the river continued to narrow and the scenery changed from rock-ribbed and desolate to pleasant woodlands. One hundred and forty-five kilometres upstream from the mouth of the Saguenay, he came upon an island so dense with wild grapes that he christened it Bacchus Island, after the Roman god of wine, but then had second thoughts and more prudently renamed it Île d'Orléans in honour of France's Prince Henri, duc d'Orléans. Cartier journeyed on, making his way as far as Hochelaga, the future site of Montreal, before turning back. All in all, the explorer was much taken with the great river of Canada, as he called it. In Cartier's wake came fur traders and settlers, and soon the river became the natural axis of New France. Today, it is still the focus of Quebec settlement; the province's major cities and many of its towns are strung out along the river's shores. The St. Lawrence remains Canada's most important commercial waterway, an importance that was enhanced by the completion, in 1959, of the massive construction project that saw locks and canals built and the river dredged in places to create the St. Lawrence Seaway. Now, even the largest vessels could penetrate the continent as far as Duluth, Minnesota, at the western extremity of Lake Superior.  |
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Indeed, as we travel westward I see plenty of evidence of the river's role as a major transportation corridor. In addition to many fishing boats, myriad other small craft – launches, runabouts, sailboats and dinghies – constantly crisscross the waterway, and we recurrently pass other lakers heading downstream for Port Cartier or Sept-Îles with cargoes of western grain. Once we are overtaken by a splendid, pure white luxury cruise ship, the Crystal Harmony, on its way, no doubt, to Quebec City or Montreal. There are also quite a number of ocean-going freighters, which carry a wide range of cargoes (everything from foodstuffs to heavy machinery) to and from Europe and elsewhere. These "salties," as they are known in the shipping business, are the modern equivalent of the old tramp steamers, seeking cargoes of opportunity on both sides of the Atlantic. The domestic shipping industry has mixed feelings about the increased use of the seaway by offshore vessels. The grain trade from the West has fallen off in recent years, and additional competition is particularly unwelcome in tough times. On the other hand, the salties carry a great deal of trans-Atlantic cargo that is of no interest to domestic carriers but increases seaway revenues. And there is no doubt that the many foreign ships that now travel the St. Lawrence bring a cosmopolitan touch to the Canadian ports they visit. . . . . .
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| AS WE APPROACH the mouth of the Saguenay, we begin to encounter another type of marine traffic: flotillas of whale-watching vessels of all shapes and sizes, from Zodiacs to three-decked steamers. We on the Algocape had seen our first whales some time before (a series of waterspouts had heralded the passage of a pod of whales across our bow). Now, as we enter the krill-rich waters at the Saguenay's mouth, we begin to see belugas, or white whales. They show little fear of the ship, and a short distance off our starboard beam, a trio of belugas executes a perfectly timed formation leap, for all the world as if they were performing at some marine park. One nearby shipload of watchers, their attention distracted by our passage, turn their binoculars and cameras on us, while behind them, unseen, a beluga silently breaches the surface scarcely 10 metres from their backs. The town of Tadoussac sits on a terrace of sand and clay at the confluence of the two great rivers. Given so strategic a location, it is easy to understand why, by the middle of the 17th century, it was already a major fur-trading centre. It is also the site of one of the oldest wooden chapels in North America, Petite Chapelle de Tadoussac, which was built in 1747. In the 19th century, the development of a local forestry industry gave new life to this isolated community, and today Tadoussac has found yet another lifeline in the burgeoning tourism of the Charlevoix region, which was named a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO "for its unique combination of nature and culture." Near the mouth of the Saguenay, the St. Lawrence is still mainly salt water, but the ocean's tidal thrust is losing its strength. From here, the slackening tidal crest will take nearly three hours to travel the 145 kilometres to Île d'Orléans, the tidal divide. Until this point, the fresh water coming from the upper river fights to mix with the tide-borne salt water of the sea; above Île d'Orléans, no salt water penetrates – the fresh water merely backs up under tidal pressure. But we are not destined to see Île d'Orléans in daylight; dusk has already fallen as, after some 18 hours under way, we come abreast of the twinkling lights of Rivière-du-Loup on the river's southern shore, still about 130 kilometres from Île d'Orléans. We are left to glide past Île-aux-Coudres (named by Cartier after the hazelnut trees that he found growing in profusion there), Cap-Tourmente and the whole 33-kilometre length of Île d'Orléans (after the island of Montreal, the biggest island in the St. Lawrence) in darkness. A totally different landscape greets our eyes the next morning. The previous day, the north shore had presented, for the most part, a prospect of small communities strung along the shoreline at the foot of a series of low, rocky cliffs. But here, a few kilometres downstream from Quebec City, the bordering cliffs have swung much closer and the vast, brooding presence of the Canadian Shield – the immense sweep of Precambrian rock that buttresses fully half of Canada – is palpable. Here, the great scarp of the shield's edge comes within a kilometre of the river itself, and the nearby Montmorency River spills over it, falling 83 metres, half as much again as at Niagara Falls. |
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Shortly, we come upon one of the most spectacular sights the river has to offer: the great rock promontory of Quebec City's Citadel Hill, rising 100 metres in a sheer face from the river's edge. This is not the old granitic rock of the shield but, rather, a block of grey shale – sedimentary rock – several hundred million years younger. From where I stand on the Algocape's foredeck, I can easily pick out the familiar details: the uplifted military ramparts, the punctuation of Martello towers, the railway-gothic roof of the Château Frontenac, the colourful clutter of Lower Town spilling to the water's edge. It's not hard to see why Quebec City once earned the nickname Gibraltar of America. I turn away, and in our wake I see the Quebec-Levis ferry ploughing sturdily towards the south shore. It's a transportation lifeline, plying the river 365 days a year. |
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Immediately upstream of Quebec City, the river narrows again, this time to little more than a kilometre as the walls of the valley converge – at times squeezing the waterway into a barely navigable channel that must be negotiated with extreme care and at minimum speed. Slowly, the gaunt hills give way to a less forbidding landscape. We are, in fact, crossing an environmental frontier, leaving behind the cold, harsh Labrador terrain that lies to the north and east and swinging south to enter the relatively benign St. Lawrence lowlands. By water, only 230 kilometres separate Quebec City and Montreal, but the latter is nearly two full degrees of latitude farther south than the provincial capital – and that makes an important climatic difference. Montreal enjoys, on average, 177 frost-free days a year compared with Quebec City's 157. |
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Trois-Rivières, an important centre located roughly halfway between Quebec City and Montreal, is sited at the confluence of not the advertised three, but two rivers – the St. Lawrence and the St-Maurice. (The name is actually derived from the three prongs of the river created by the two islands at the mouth of the St-Maurice.) Between Quebec City and Trois-Rivières, the freshwater flow of the river is reversed by the tides, but above Trois-Rivières, for the first time on our voyage, we escape all tidal effects, and from here on the river is generally calm. For most of the distance between Quebec City and Trois-Rivières, the St. Lawrence has maintained a regular width of around four kilometres, but now, a little west of Trois-Rivières, it begins to widen again to form Lac St-Pierre, a slow-moving stretch of water that reaches a width of 15 kilometres and extends for some 23 kilometres. At its western tip is the town of Sorel, which lies at the mouth of another historically important tributary, the Richelieu, named after France's ruthlessly geopolitical cleric, Cardinal Richelieu. The river was explored by Samuel de Champlain in 1609, and numerous forts were built along its banks to defend the territory of New France. Today, its valley is the source of many of Quebec's agricultural products. A large cluster of islands sit at the mouth of the Richelieu, their reedy shorelines providing a sanctuary for many species of sea birds and ducks. Just now the sky is alive with flocks of birds, and we pass a sizable raft of Canada geese, numbering in the hundreds and appearing quite unconcerned at our near proximity. As we approach Montreal, the role of the St. Lawrence as a great conduit of commerce becomes even clearer. There is a marked increase in river traffic, ships bearing the flags of many countries pass up and down or are moored alongside crowded docks. The skyline is a tapestry of loading cranes, and the river banks themselves are crowded with the infrastructure of industry: marshalling yards, kilometre after kilometre of storage sheds, piles of lumber and other raw materials and hectares of sealed containers, today the preferred method of moving many kinds of cargo. Montreal itself provides a surprise. Although I lived in the city for quite a number of years, I am unprepared for the totally new perspective that the river confers on familiar landmarks. From midstream, the bridges that connect the mainland to the archipelago on which the city is built take on a majesty that is not apparent when they are approached by land in rush hour, and Montreal's downtown skyline, with Mount Royal providing a magnificent backdrop, seems similarly exotic and impressive when viewed from the water. When one travels upstream, as we are doing, Montreal is the last point on the journey where, for all practical purposes, the St. Lawrence is still at sea level. Between here and Iroquois, Ont., the river climbs about 68 metres, and ships are able to make their way upstream only through the series of seven locks and four canals that were built as part of the St. Lawrence Seaway project.  |
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| We enter the first of the locks at St. Lambert, Que., on the south shore of the river just across from Montreal. Transiting the locks is extremely exacting work for the crew of the lakers, and it's easy to see why our captain, Craig Ball, spends long hours on the bridge of the Algocape at these times. Manoeuvring a huge vessel into such a tight space in a river with a strong current demands the highest handling skills; when the ship is finally secured, there are but a few metres to spare fore and aft and less than a metre on each side. The canals that were constructed as part of the seaway project, such as the one that bypasses the famous Lachine Rapids just west of Montreal, remind one strongly of the canals of western Europe, and it is a strange feeling to emerge from such a constricted series of passages into a river that literally stretches from horizon to horizon. Negotiating the locks and canals in this stretch of the river occupies most of the night. The eastern Ontario cities of Cornwall and Prescott, too, are passed in darkness. We are, in fact, traversing the international section of the St. Lawrence Seaway, where construction of hydroelectric power dams required the flooding of natural shorelines and the drowning of several historic communities, including the village of Iroquois and a large portion of the riverside town of Morrisburg. Altogether, some 6,500 people and 550 homes were displaced to make way for the seaway. Dawn finds us abreast of Brockville, Ont., nearing the entrance to one of the most scenic sections of the entire river, the famous Thousand Islands. Here, on every side, the St. Lawrence is dotted with bare or tree-covered knobs of rock of varying sizes. These islands owe their existence to an extension of the 900-million-year-old rocks of the Precambrian Shield, which runs from eastern Ontario across the river into New York State, where it underlies the Adirondack Mountains. At this stage, the St. Lawrence scarcely resembles the majestic and compelling waterway I had seen downriver, but rather a vast, sluggish stream forded by Precambrian stepping stones. The various subordinate channels are busy with the runabouts of island residents, small forests of mainmasts mark the many shoreline marinas, and Thousand Islands tour boats of assorted sizes and profiles are noticeably common. This region, rich in flora and fauna (a fisher's paradise, some 38 species of fish have been identified here), has been a popular recreational area for at least 200 years. And long before the arrival of European explorers, it was a popular camping spot of the Iroquois. Today, many cottages, as well as several elaborate estates and even the odd castle (which wouldn't look out of place on the banks of the Rhine), occupy the islands. As the Algocape threads its way at reduced speed among the rocky outcrops – sometimes in Canadian waters, sometimes American – we pass within hailing distance of Boldt Castle, which was built around the turn of the century by George Boldt, a German immigrant who had made his fortune in New York. He was building the castle for his wife, but she died before it was completed and work was abandoned. For 73 years the building stood untouched, a ghostly reminder of lost love. Then, in 1977, it was acquired by the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority, which has spent millions of dollars on restorations to both the outside and inside of the structure. The Thousand Islands extend for more than 80 kilometres and, despite the highly developed tourism of the region, have retained their natural beauty and charm to an extraordinary degree. There are those who would echo the comment of Louis de Buade, comte de Frontenac, who, shortly after being appointed governor of New France in 1672, described the region as the most delightful in the world. We have passed under one of the great spans of the Thousand Islands Bridge and are approaching the city of Kingston, Ont. It is here, at a spot called Everett Point, just west of Kingston Harbour, that the St. Lawrence officially begins. But we on the Algocape still have some distance to go to deliver our cargo of iron ore. Maintaining our westerly course, we enter Lake Ontario, flanking the southern shores of Wolfe and Amherst Islands and then of Prince Edward County. Just off Point Petre, at the southernmost tip of the county, at a navigational point known as Sodus, the Algocape makes one of the routine calls it's obliged to make to report on its progress, this time to the control centre at Massena, New York. This happens to be a well-known procedure to me. The house with the big barn on the shoreline just west of Point Petre, now perfectly discernible from the bridge of the Algocape, is my home, and my wife and I spend much of the seaway navigation season watching the endlessly fascinating parade of vessels and monitoring their progress via the seaway's radio channel. But, familiar though I am with this traffic and its place in both history and the Canadian imagination, it has taken a voyage up the whole length of the St. Lawrence to underline the vital role that this river of commerce still plays in Canadian life. The voyage has also provided me with a rare glimpse of life on board a laker. For the crews of these ships ("landlocked sailors," they have been called), it's a demanding job, unmitigated by the glamour that sometimes attaches itself to the lives of their sea faring colleagues. Captain Ball, a burly, watchful man in his midforties, says that weather is always his concern. Although the early months of winter bring the greatest hazards, summer is not without its dangers (fog, for example, can reduce visibility off the mouth of the Saguenay to near zero). But Ball knows that the St. Lawrence demands respect on even the calmest day, and that, in negotiating the seaway, a few metres can literally spell the difference between disaster and success. On this last leg of our trip, we are headed across Lake Ontario for Hamilton Harbour. Night has fallen by the time we arrive, but unloading begins the minute we tie up at the dock. Transporting bulk cargoes is a highly competitive business and there is no time to be lost. It takes two days to unload the 26,000 tonnes of iron ore and another day and a half to take on the 15,000 tonnes of grain that is to be delivered to Prescott, Ont., 390 kilometres east of Hamilton, and then, once again, the Algocape will be headed for the St. Lawrence. |
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Illustrations: Clemente Botelho
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