17 Replies to “Honey, I Finished The St. Lawrence Seaway”
This is a great childhood memory of mine; traveling the St. Lawrence Seaway by ship to Newfoundland from Toronto in 1959. Those were the days when Toronto still had an active commercial shipping port. The Seaway had only been opened a few years prior.
The Seaway had been under discussion and negotiation with the United States for decades. It was halted by the Second World War while still in the planning phase. Then as today, the limiting factor on ship size was the Welland Canal between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.
I wonder if the project would pass an environmental impact assessment by todays standards/
And, of course, the workforce would have to be gender and ethnically balanced.
All had to be relocated, along with 64 km of the CNR main rail line between Toronto and Montreal (the busiest rail corridor in the country) and the moving of at least 50 km of Ontario Highway 2. One of Canada’s famous battlefields in the War of 1812, Chrysler’s Farm, along with the associated village of Dickson’s Landing, are now underwater.
My parents and I came to Canada in the mid-1950s, a time during which the country was doing big things such as constructing the Trans-Canada pipeline and the Trans-Canada Highway and developing the Avro Arrow. There wasn’t much time spent in waffling about environmental impacts, equalization benefits, or how many Coleslawvanians would be employed.
The country simply rolled up its sleeves and got down to business. That attitude and outlook is what made Canada great back then.
North Americans still know how to build things, if allowed to.
They’re not allowed to.
It gets in the way of China’s eight-percent growth targets, crucial for ensuring the conquest of the United States and the replacement of Western capitalism with fascism with Chinese characteristics by 2050 at the latest.
Our best and brightest have seen to it that everything technically feasible is financially possible—in China.
One of the draglines that built the seaway wound up at a mine I worked at. They used it for many years, but set it aside in the early 00’s when parts were few and far between. I tried to make a business case a couple of times to get it fixed up so we could get the deepest coal out of the bottom of the open pits (before we backfilled them). Never did get support on it.
Rust in peace, you did good work.
i remember and knew the English immigrant who fixed bikes in Toronto went to school became a surveyor and learned to fly and then travel led across Canada to get his license in every province
did the survey for the trans Canada pipeline. I remember when Trudeau senior screwed up Canada when he gave the striking seaway workers a 20 odd% pay raise and the consequences to the Canadian cost of living.
My ancestors built this….should be a bumper sticker
I live on the bank of the St. Lawrence and get to enjoy the fruits of their labor every day.
It truly is a marvel.
Degrees in Computer Game design and Grievance Studies are more ‘creative’ and safe, except for the bed sores.
When it takes 10 years of meeting the staggering levels of bureaucrats just to build a 5 story apartment building we could never build another PEI bridge or the St. Lawrence seaway let alone a pipeline. Travelled in China and they have national tzars that direct the building of roads to what type of flowers to plant along side them. 3 Gorges was just stunning to travel through.
Oh mamma! The dredging … the dredging. With every long stretch of wooden blue map removed by Walter Cronkite … the dredging … the dredging. Ohhhhhh maammaaaa!!! Where was the Sierra Club? Where was the WWF? Think of all the silt, and the death of marine life. All for more “profit” … right?
How sad when I consider these were the films shown in my classrooms of the 1960’s … even into the 1970’s … but now school kids only get to see Al Gores filmstrip. Now the children only see “Captain Planet” brainwashing cartoons. Now … every clam is sacred. Every bunch of seaweed sacred.
Our children need to learn how every one of the goods they take for granted (and demand) actually get shipped to them. Ignorance of reality is no way to go through life.
In my sailor days 65 to 74, I first came to Canada in June of 67, up the St Lawrence to Montreal, then up into the Lakes to Toronto, Hamilton, Windsor, Detroit, and Chicago. Offloading cargo at each port, then turn around and revisit everyone of those places heading back to load cargo for Europe. Had a chance to check out the Expo 67 as well. We spent about two to three weeks up the lakes. As we went through the locks, I had the dubious honor of being swung out from the main deck on a small boom about 20 feet long, and getting lowered to a remote dock, to tie the ship up as we waited our turn to go through the locks. A few sailors died getting crushed by the ships because they were lowered to quickly and went down between the ship and the dock, before the boom was fully over the dock. Fortunately I never saw that up close, but heard about it a bunch. Sometimes we were up for 30 plus hours on standby during each lock traverse. I remember sleeping one time, right on the dock for two hours while we waited. I did that route for the whole summer and early fall. Visited Detroit a few weeks before the riots, and was back there a few weeks after. In the late fall and winter, we spent our time flitting between the Mediterranean and Europe, then back to Canada in the spring for another summer season.
Ahh memories, a great life for a single guy, fun times, hard work, shore time benders, and the proverbial girlfriend in every port.
This is a great childhood memory of mine; traveling the St. Lawrence Seaway by ship to Newfoundland from Toronto in 1959. Those were the days when Toronto still had an active commercial shipping port. The Seaway had only been opened a few years prior.
The Seaway had been under discussion and negotiation with the United States for decades. It was halted by the Second World War while still in the planning phase. Then as today, the limiting factor on ship size was the Welland Canal between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.
I wonder if the project would pass an environmental impact assessment by todays standards/
And, of course, the workforce would have to be gender and ethnically balanced.
Utterly impossible, rmgk. Construction of the Seaway required the expansion of part of the St. Lawrence River on the Canadian side and the submersion of nine towns in Ontario as detailed here;
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-lost-villages
All had to be relocated, along with 64 km of the CNR main rail line between Toronto and Montreal (the busiest rail corridor in the country) and the moving of at least 50 km of Ontario Highway 2. One of Canada’s famous battlefields in the War of 1812, Chrysler’s Farm, along with the associated village of Dickson’s Landing, are now underwater.
Canada 2020
Life Follows Art dept.
Sea of Heartbreak – Don Gibson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4bo4ByFhLM
Forget the sea of heartbreak–Prinz Dummkopf scuttled the ship of state and we’re about to go under.
You Asked For It dept.
Edmund Whatzizname:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vST6hVRj2A
My parents and I came to Canada in the mid-1950s, a time during which the country was doing big things such as constructing the Trans-Canada pipeline and the Trans-Canada Highway and developing the Avro Arrow. There wasn’t much time spent in waffling about environmental impacts, equalization benefits, or how many Coleslawvanians would be employed.
The country simply rolled up its sleeves and got down to business. That attitude and outlook is what made Canada great back then.
North Americans still know how to build things, if allowed to.
They’re not allowed to.
It gets in the way of China’s eight-percent growth targets, crucial for ensuring the conquest of the United States and the replacement of Western capitalism with fascism with Chinese characteristics by 2050 at the latest.
Our best and brightest have seen to it that everything technically feasible is financially possible—in China.
One of the draglines that built the seaway wound up at a mine I worked at. They used it for many years, but set it aside in the early 00’s when parts were few and far between. I tried to make a business case a couple of times to get it fixed up so we could get the deepest coal out of the bottom of the open pits (before we backfilled them). Never did get support on it.
Rust in peace, you did good work.
i remember and knew the English immigrant who fixed bikes in Toronto went to school became a surveyor and learned to fly and then travel led across Canada to get his license in every province
did the survey for the trans Canada pipeline. I remember when Trudeau senior screwed up Canada when he gave the striking seaway workers a 20 odd% pay raise and the consequences to the Canadian cost of living.
My ancestors built this….should be a bumper sticker
I live on the bank of the St. Lawrence and get to enjoy the fruits of their labor every day.
It truly is a marvel.
Degrees in Computer Game design and Grievance Studies are more ‘creative’ and safe, except for the bed sores.
When it takes 10 years of meeting the staggering levels of bureaucrats just to build a 5 story apartment building we could never build another PEI bridge or the St. Lawrence seaway let alone a pipeline. Travelled in China and they have national tzars that direct the building of roads to what type of flowers to plant along side them. 3 Gorges was just stunning to travel through.
Oh mamma! The dredging … the dredging. With every long stretch of wooden blue map removed by Walter Cronkite … the dredging … the dredging. Ohhhhhh maammaaaa!!! Where was the Sierra Club? Where was the WWF? Think of all the silt, and the death of marine life. All for more “profit” … right?
How sad when I consider these were the films shown in my classrooms of the 1960’s … even into the 1970’s … but now school kids only get to see Al Gores filmstrip. Now the children only see “Captain Planet” brainwashing cartoons. Now … every clam is sacred. Every bunch of seaweed sacred.
Our children need to learn how every one of the goods they take for granted (and demand) actually get shipped to them. Ignorance of reality is no way to go through life.
Check out the history of the Steep Rock iron mine in Ontario, divert the rivers, dam and drain the lake, mine the ore.
https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1945/12/1/big-iron
In my sailor days 65 to 74, I first came to Canada in June of 67, up the St Lawrence to Montreal, then up into the Lakes to Toronto, Hamilton, Windsor, Detroit, and Chicago. Offloading cargo at each port, then turn around and revisit everyone of those places heading back to load cargo for Europe. Had a chance to check out the Expo 67 as well. We spent about two to three weeks up the lakes. As we went through the locks, I had the dubious honor of being swung out from the main deck on a small boom about 20 feet long, and getting lowered to a remote dock, to tie the ship up as we waited our turn to go through the locks. A few sailors died getting crushed by the ships because they were lowered to quickly and went down between the ship and the dock, before the boom was fully over the dock. Fortunately I never saw that up close, but heard about it a bunch. Sometimes we were up for 30 plus hours on standby during each lock traverse. I remember sleeping one time, right on the dock for two hours while we waited. I did that route for the whole summer and early fall. Visited Detroit a few weeks before the riots, and was back there a few weeks after. In the late fall and winter, we spent our time flitting between the Mediterranean and Europe, then back to Canada in the spring for another summer season.
Ahh memories, a great life for a single guy, fun times, hard work, shore time benders, and the proverbial girlfriend in every port.