St Lawrence River and Seaway
One of the many ships to use the St. Lawrence.
The Saint Lawrence River originates at the outflow of Lake Ontario. From there, it passes 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). Its drainage area, which includes the Great Lakes that is 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 meters per second (367,000 ft³/s).
The St Lawrence Seaway is the common name for a system of canals that permits ocean-going vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes as far as Lake Superior. Legally it extends from Montreal to Lake Erie, including the Welland Canal and the Great Lakes Waterway. The seaway is named after the Saint Lawrence River, which it follows from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Ontario.
March 23, 2007 6:35 AM | Category: Boats, Great Lakes