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The Eisenhower Locks in Massena, NY.

The Saint Lawrence Seaway (St. Lawrence Seaway), (French: la Voie Maritime du Saint-Laurent), is the common name for a system of locks, canals and channels that permits ocean-going vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, as far inland as the western end of Lake Superior. Legally, the Seaway extends from Montreal, Quebec, to Lake Erie, and it included the Welland Canal. The Seaway is named for the Saint Lawrence River, which flows from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean. This section downstream of the Seaway is not a continuous canal, but rather it consists of several stretches of navigable channels within the river, a number of locks, as well as canals along the banks of the St. Lawrence River to bypass several rapids and dams along the way. A number of the locks are managed by the Canadian Saint Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation and others are managed by the American Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation.

History[link]

The Saint Lawrence Seaway was preceded by a number of other canals. In 1871, locks on the Saint Lawrence allowed transit of vessels 186 ft (57 m) long, 44 ft 6 in (13.56 m) wide, and 9 ft (2.7 m) deep. The Welland Canal at that time allowed transit of vessels 142 ft (43 m) long, 26 ft (7.9 m) wide, and 10 ft (3.0 m) deep, but was generally too small to allow passage of larger ocean-going ships.

The first proposals for a binational comprehensive deep waterway along the St. Lawrence came in the 1890s. In the following decades the idea of a power project became inseparable from the seaway - in fact, the various governments involved believed that the deeper water created by the hydro project were necessary to make the seaway channels feasible. American proposals for development up to and including the First World War met with little interest from the Canadian federal government. But the two national governments submitted St. Lawrence plans, and the Wooten-Bowden Report and the International Joint Commission both recommended the project in the early 1920s. Although the Liberal Mackenzie King was reluctant to proceed, in part because of opposition to the project in Quebec, in 1932 the two countries inked a treaty. This failed to receive the assent of Congress. Subsequent attempts to forge an agreement in the 1930s came to naught as the Ontario government of Mitchell Hepburn, along with Quebec, got in the way. By 1941, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister King made an executive agreement to build the joint hydro and navigation works, but this too failed to receive the assent of Congress. Proposals for the seaway were met with resistance from railway and port lobbyists in the United States.

In the post-1945 years, proposals to introduce tolls still could not induce the U.S. Congress to approve the project. Growing impatient, and with Ontario desperate for hydro-electricity, Canada began to consider "going it alone." This seized the imagination of Canadians, engendering a groundswell of St. Lawrence nationalism. Fueled by this support, the government of Louis St. Laurent decided over the course of 1951 and 1952 to construct the waterway alone, combined with the Moses-Saunders Power Dam (which would prove to be the joint responsibility of Ontario and New York: as a power dam would change the water levels, it required bilateral cooperation). However, the Truman and Eisenhower administrations considered it a national security threat for Canada to alone control the deep waterway, and used various means - such as delaying and stalling the Federal Power Commission license for the power aspect - until Congress in early 1954 approved an American seaway role via the Wiley-Dondero act. Canada, out of concern for the ramifications of the bilateral relationship, reluctantly acquiesced.

In the United States, Dr. N.R. Danelian (who was the Director of the 13 volume St. Lawrence Seaway Survey in the U.S. Department of Navigation (1932-1963)), worked with the U.S. Secretary of State on Canadian-United States issues regarding the Seaway and worked for over 15 years on passage of the Seaway Act. He later became President of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Association to further the interests of the Seaway development to benefit the American Heartland.

The seaway opened in 1959 and cost C$470 million, $336.2 million of which was paid by the Canadian government.^[1] Queen Elizabeth II and President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally opened the Seaway with a short cruise aboard Royal Yacht Britannia after addressing the crowds in St. Lambert, Quebec.

The seaway's opening is often credited with making the Erie Canal obsolete, thus setting off the severe economic decline of several cities in Upstate New York.

Locks in the Saint Lawrence River[link]

Iroquois Locks

There are six locks in the Saint Lawrence River portion of the Seaway. From downstream to upstream they are^[2]:

1. St. Lambert Lock - Saint Lambert, QC
2. Côte Ste. Catherine Lock - Sainte-Catherine, QC
3. Beauharnois Locks (2 locks) - Melocheville, QC - at 45°18′12.6″N 73°55′36.5″W / 45.3035°N 73.926806°W / 45.3035; -73.926806 and 45°19′0.1″N 73°55′6.6″W / 45.316694°N 73.9185°W / 45.316694; -73.9185
4. Snell Lock - Massena, NY
5. Eisenhower Lock - Massena, NY
6. Iroquois Lock - Iroquois, ON - at 44°49′48″N 75°18′46.8″W / 44.83°N 75.313°W / 44.83; -75.313

Locks in the Welland Canal[link]

There are 8 locks on the Welland Canal.

1. St. Catharines, Ontario
2. St. Catharines
3. St. Catharines
4. Thorold, Ontario
5. Thorold
6. Thorold
7. Thorold
8. Port Colborne, Ontario

Lock and channel dimensions[link]

The size of vessels that can traverse the seaway is limited by the size of locks. Locks on the St. Lawrence and on the Welland Canal are 766 ft (233.5 m) long, 80 ft (24.4 m) wide, and 30 ft (9.14 m) deep. The maximum allowed vessel size is slightly smaller: 740 ft (225.6 m) long, 78 ft (23.8 m) wide, and 26.5 ft (8.1 m) deep; many vessels designed for use on the Great Lakes following the opening of the seaway were built to the maximum size permissible by the locks, known informally as Seawaymax or Seaway-Max. Large vessels of the lake freighter fleet are built on the lakes and cannot travel downstream beyond the Welland Canal. On the remaining Great Lakes, these ships are constrained only by the largest lock on the Great Lakes Waterway, the Poe Lock at the Soo Locks, which is 1,200 ft (365.8 m) long, 110 ft (33.5 m) wide and 32 ft (9.8 m) deep.

A vessel's draft is another obstacle to passage on the seaway, particularly in connecting waterways such as the St. Lawrence River. The depth in the channels of the seaway is 41 ft (12.5 m) (Panamax-depth) downstream of Quebec City, 35 ft (10.7 m) between Quebec City and Deschaillons, 37 ft (11.3 m) to Montreal, and 27 ft (8.2 m) upstream of Montreal. Channel depths and limited lock sizes mean that only 10% of ocean-going ships can traverse the entire seaway. Proposals to expand the seaway, dating from as early as the 1960s, have been rejected as too costly, and environmentally and economically unsound. Lower water levels in the Great Lakes have also posed problems for some vessels in recent years.

While the seaway is currently (2010) mostly used for shipping bulk cargo, the possibility of its use for large-scale container shipping is under consideration as well. If the project goes ahead, feeder ships would take containers from the port of Oswego on Lake Ontario in upstate New York to Melford International Terminal in Nova Scotia for transfer to larger ocean-going ships.^[3]

Ecology[link]

To create a navigable channel through the Long Sault rapids and to allow hydroelectric stations to be established immediately upriver from Cornwall, Ontario and Massena, New York, Lake St. Lawrence was created through the flooding on 1 July 1958 of six villages and three hamlets in Ontario, now collectively known as "The Lost Villages." There was also inundation on the New York side, but no communities were affected. The creation of the seaway also led to the introduction of invasive species of aquatic animals, most notably the zebra mussel into the Great Lakes Basin.

The seaway provides significant entertainment and recreation such as boating, camping, fishing, and scuba diving. Of note, The Old Power House near Lock 23 (near Morrisburg, ON) became an attractive site for scuba divers, the submerged stone building covered with barnacles and home to an abundance of underwater life.^[4]

The Seaway also provides a number of divable shipwrecks within recreational scuba limits (shallower than 130 ft (40 m)) The region also offers technical diving with some wrecks lying at 240 ft (73 m). Surprisingly, the water temperature can be as warm as 75 °F (24 °C) during the mid to late summer months. The first 10 ft (3 m) of Lake Ontario is warmed and enters the St. Lawrence river as the fast moving water body has no thermocline circulation.

On 12 July 2010, Richelieu (owned by Canada Steamship Lines) ran aground after losing power near the Côte-Sainte-Catherine lock. The grounding punctured a fuel tank, spilling an estimated 200 tonnes of diesel fuel, covering approximately 500 m². The seaway and the lock were shut down to help contain the spill.^[5]

See also[link]

• Great Lakes Waterway
• Erie Canal
• Lachine Canal
• Soulanges Canal
• Lake Champlain Seaway

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Puccia Parham, Claire (2009), The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project : an oral history of the greatest construction show on earth, Syracuse University Press, ISBN 978-0-8156-0913-1, http://books.google.ca/books?id=pxgOX-bUXVwC&lpg=PP1&dq=Saint%20Lawrence%20Seaway&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=true 
• Seaway Handbook issued by the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation, (Head Office, 202 Pitt Street, Cornwall, Ontario, Canada K6J 3P7) 2006.
• Willoughby, William R. (1961). The St. Lawrence Waterway: A Study in Politics and Diplomacy. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=6005588. 
• Macfarlane, Daniel. To the Heart of the Continent: Canada and the Negotiation of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project. PhD dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2010.

External links[link]

• Great Lakes St Lawrence Seaway System web site
• The St Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation
• St. Lawrence Seaway April 25, 1959
• Documents and Photographs relating to the Saint Lawrence Seaway, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
• The Lost Villages Historical Society
• Excerpt from the Illustrated London News, January 11, 1862 describing the Canals of Canada.
• The Great Waterway: a site dedicated to tourism along the waterway from Lake Ontario to Cornwall and the Seaway Valley
• Exchange of Notes, amending 1959 Agreement of Application of Tolls
• CBC Digital Archives — The St Lawrence Seaway: Gateway to the world
• Bibliography on Water Resources and International Law See Great Lakes; St. Lawrence River and Seaway. Peace Palace Library
• Channel Depth and Width and Length^{[dead link]}
• A film clip "Longines Chronoscope with George A. Dondero" is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]

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Saint Lawrence
Lawrence before Valerianus
Martyr
Born	c. 225 AD Osca, Hispania (now modern-day Spain)
Died	258 AD 10th August Rome
Honored in	Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglican Communion, Lutheranism
Canonized	Pre-Congregation
Major shrine	Basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le Mura in Rome
Feast	August 10
Attributes	Usually holding a gridiron and wearing a dalmatic
Patronage	Rome, Rotterdam, Birgu (Malta), Huesca (Spain), San Lawrenz, Brgy. San Lorenzo, San Pablo City, Philippines (Gozo), Canada, Sri Lanka, comedians, librarians, students, miners, tanners, chefs, roasters

Lawrence of Rome (Latin: Laurentius, lit. "laurelled"; c. 225 – 258) was one of the seven deacons of ancient Rome, serving under Pope St. Sixtus II, who were martyred during the persecution of Valerian in 258.

Holy Chalice[link]

According to lore, among the treasures of the Greek church entrusted to Lawrence for safe-keeping was the Holy Chalice, the cup from which Jesus and the Apostles drank at the Last Supper. Lawrence was able to spirit this away to Huesca, in present day Aragon, with a letter and a supposed inventory, where it lay hidden and unregarded for centuries. When Augustine connects Lawrence with a chalice, it is the chalice of the Mass:

For in that Church, you see, as you have regularly been told, he performed the office of deacon; it was there that he administered the sacred chalice of Christ’s blood.

According to Christian history the Holy Grail is a relic that was sent by St Lawrence to his parents in northern Aragon. He entrusted this sacred chalice to a friend whom he knew would travel back to Huesca, remaining in the monastery of Saint John of Pena, core of spiritual strength for the emerging kingdom of Aragon. While the Holy Chalice's exact journey through the centuries is disputed, it is generally accepted by Catholics that the Chalice was sent by his family to this monastery for preservation and veneration. Historical records indicate that this chalice has been venerated and preserved by a number of monks and monasteries through the ages. Today the Holy Grail is venerated in a special chapel in the Catholic Cathedral of Valencia, Spain.

Jewels of St Lawrence[link]

After the death of Sixtus, the prefect of Rome demanded that Lawrence turn over the riches of the Church. Ambrose is the earliest source for the tale that Lawrence asked for three days to gather together the wealth.^[1] Lawrence worked swiftly to distribute as much Church property to the poor as possible, so as to prevent its being seized by the prefect. On the third day, at the head of a small delegation, he presented himself to the prefect, and when ordered to give up the treasures of the Church, he presented the poor, the crippled, the blind and the suffering, and said that these were the true treasures of the Church. One account records him declaring to the prefect, "The Church is truly rich, far richer than your emperor." This act of defiance led directly to his martyrdom. This can be compared to the parallel Roman tale of the jewels of Cornelia.

Martyrdom[link]

"The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence" by Juan de León (1758) R.A.B.A.S.F., Madrid)

By tradition, Lawrence was sentenced at San Lorenzo in Miranda, imprisoned in San Lorenzo in Fonte, martyred at San Lorenzo in Panisperna, and buried in the Via Tiburtina in the Catacomb of Cyriaca by Hippolytus and Justinus, a presbyter. Tradition holds that Lawrence was burned or "grilled" to death, hence his association with the gridiron. Tradition also holds that Lawrence joked about their cooking him enough to eat while he was burning on the gridiron, hence his patronage of cooks and chefs, stating something along the lines of, "turn me over ... I'm done on this side". One of the early sources for the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence was the description by Aurelius Prudentius Clemens in his Peristephanon, Hymn II.

Some historians, such as Rev. Patrick Healy, view the traditions of how Lawrence was martyred as "not worthy of credence"^[2], as the slow lingering death can not be reconciled "with the express command contained in the edict regarding bishops, priests, and deacons (animadvertantur) which ordinarily meant decapitation."^[2] A theory of how the tradition arose is put forward by Pio Franchi de' Cavalieri. He postulates that it was the result of a mistaken transcription, the accidental omission of the letter "p" - "by which the customary and solemn formula for announcing the death of a martyr--passus est ["he suffered," that is, was martyred ] -- was made to read assus est [he was roasted]."^[2] The Liber Pontificalis, which is held to draw from sources independent of the existing traditions and Acta regarding Lawrence, uses passus est concerning him, the same term it uses for Pope Sixtus II (martyred by beheading during the same persecution).^[2]

Constantine I is said to have built a small oratory in honour of the martyr, which was a station on the itineraries of the graves of the Roman martyrs by the seventh century. Pope Damasus I rebuilt or repaired the church, now known as San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, while the minor basilica of San Lorenzo in Panisperna was built over the place of his martyrdom. The gridiron of the martyrdom was placed by Pope Paschal II in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina.

Veneration[link]

The stone on which Lawrence's body was laid after death, in San Lorenzo fuori le mura

Lawrence is one of the most widely venerated saints of the Roman Catholic Church. Devotion to him was widespread by the fourth century. As his martyrdom occurred very early in Church history, many Non-Catholic Christians honour him as well. Since the Perseid Meteor Shower typically occurs every year in mid-August, on or near Saint Lawrence's feast day, some refer to the shower as the "Tears of Saint Lawrence."

The shrine in Rome containing the gridiron said to have been used to grill Lawrence to death

St Lawrence is especially honoured in the city of Rome, where he is one of the city's patrons. There are several churches in Rome dedicated to him, including San Lorenzo in Panisperna, traditionally identified as the place of his execution. He is invoked by librarians, archivists, cooks, and tanners as their patron. His celebration on 10 August has the rank of feast throughout the entire Catholic world.^[3] On this day, the reliquary containing his burnt head is displayed in the Vatican for veneration.

Lawrence statue in St. Lawrence Deacon & Martyr Parish Church, Balagtas, Bulacan, Philippines[1].

The Escorial Palace, situated at the foot of Mt. Abantos in the Sierra de Guadarrama, was built by King Philip II of Spain to commemorate the victory of Spanish forces over those of King Henry II of France at the Battle of St Quentin, which took place on the feast of St Lawrence on 10 August 1557. To honour the martyr, the entire floor plan of this imposing edifice was laid out in the form of a gridiron, the means by which St Lawrence was martyred.

French explorer Jacques Cartier gave the name of Saint Lawrence to the widest river estuary in the world. At the mouth of this river is the large Gulf of Saint Lawrence, surrounded by all the Canadian Maritime provinces. Closer to the source of this river are the Laurentian mountains (north of the city of Montreal), the major Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent (borough), as well as the famed Saint Lawrence Boulevard that spans the full 11.25 km width of the island of Montreal. Further upstream, on the south side of the river near its source at Lake Ontario, is St. Lawrence County, New York.

St Lawrence is the patron saint of the monks of Ampleforth Abbey. St Lawrence is also venerated by Anglo-Catholics. A major church in Sydney, Australia, situated in the former civil (land division) parish of St Lawrence, is called "Christ Church St. Laurence". The Brotherhood of St Laurence also bears his name.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Saint Lawrence

Prayer[link]

This prayer can be found in the Divine Office on the saint's feast day, August 10:^[4][5] <poem>

Father,

you called Saint Lawrence to serve you by love

and crowned his life with glorious martyrdom.

Help us to be like him

in loving you and doing your work.

Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever. Amen.</poem>

Or more accurately: <poem>

O God,

Blessed Lawrence showed forth the fire of his love for you, both by faithful service and glorious martyrdom.

Make us to love the things which he loved,

and to do the works that he taught.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.</poem>

In the Breviary of 1962 (now authorized again) the prayer reads:

O Almighty God,

Who didst give unto Blessed Lawrence power

to be more than conqueror in his fiery torment;

grant unto us, we beseech thee,

the power to quench the flames of our sinful lusts.

Through Jesus Christ, we pray

Amen ^[6]

See also[link]

• Saint Lawrence (disambiguation) for places, churches and schools called Saint Lawrence or Saint Laurent
• San Lorenzo del Escorial, the monastery built by Philip II to commemorate his victory at St. Quentin on the feast day of St. Lawrence. The monastery (and the attached palace, college, library, etc.) are laid out in a grid resembling a grill with a handle.
• Saint Lawrence River
• San Lorenzo de Almagro
• List of saints
• Lorcán Ua Tuathail, also known as St Laurence O'Toole

References[link]

External links[link]

• Henry Wace, A Dictionary of Christian Biography: Laurentius
• Catholic Encyclopedia Saint Lawrence
• Golden Legend: "The Life of Saint Laurence"
• Leo I: Sermon on St Lawrence
• Orthodox Christianity Church of Saint Lawrence
• [2] Church of Saint Lawrence, Birgu, Malta
• [3] Patron of Ampleforth Abbey, North Yorkshire