On June 26th, 1959 the St. Lawrence Seaway between Lake Ontario and Montreal was christened, and port cities along the Great Lakes and upper St. Lawrence River were connected to global trade by commercial navigation. Through the digging of new channels in the riverbed, flooding shallow sections, blasting away islands, displacing six villages and building a series of locks, the Seaway’s proponents envisioned an economic renaissance.

These predictions never came to true. The Seaway has never operated at fully capacity, and total tonnage peaking in the 1970s. Today the Seaway continues to operate at well below capacity, serving mainly as a route for the movement of goods domestically via Canadian vessels. Only a few hundred international vessels voyage to the Great Lakes each year.

Meanwhile, the environmental consequences of this massive engineering project have been tremendous. International shipping opened the doors to a new and intense wave of invasive species, while the construction and operation of the Seaway artificially stabilized water levels, damaged valuable near shore habitat and weakened native fish populations.