ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY

ALONG the steel-blue St. Laurence River, seaward outlet of the world's busiest inland waterway, a century-old dream is coming true. A work force of 15,000 men, with the most modern construction machines, is gathering on the U.S. and Canadian banks of the river to build the long-heralded St. Lawrence Seaway and power development. When it is finished in 1959, some 13 billion kilowatt hours of low-cost electricity, three times the output of Hoover Dam, will be generated annually by the river's waters for U.S. and Canadian industry. The river and the Great Lakes it drains will be transformed into a man-made Mediterranean, on which seagoing ships can sail westward 2,300 miles into North America's heartland.

The seaway's impact on both the geography and economy of the continent will be enormous. More than 8,000 miles of new coastline will be added to the U.S--s and Canada. Such lakefront cities as Chicago, Cleveland, l)uluth, Buffalo, Toronto and Hamilton will become genuine deepwater ports, 500 miles closer to Europe by seaway than at present. Goods now shipped by rail to the Atlantic from the U.S. Midwest at a cost of $13 a ton will be sent down the St. Lawrence to the sea for about $1.70. Millions will be spent along the waterfront to enlarge ports, and new industries will be drawn to the lake cities to take advantage of the faster export service and lower shipping rate.

Canoeing to China. Ever since the Breton sea captain, Jacques Cartier, discovered it in 1535, the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes route has been North America's most important waterway. Cartier thought he had found a new route to China; he and later French explorers pressed on upriver expecting to find Oriental gold and spices. They never reached China, but the voyageurs, fur traders and missionaries who came after them canoed up the river and its tributaries into lands that were to prove far richer than fabled Cathay. The river led them to the Mississippi Valley, the Great Plains and the fur, mineral and timber country of Northern Ontario and Quebec. Their camp sites, trading posts and missions are today's cities and towns.

In the following two centuries, the history of Canada and much of the U.S. was written along the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes. French colonists carved out their farms on the riverbanks, built the shrines, stone towers and farmhouses that dot Quebec's landscape today. Special ships from France brought the volunteer files du Roi (the King's girls) up the river to marry the lonely habitants and populate New France. In 1759 the river betrayed the colony. The British were able to sail their fleet up its broad stream, conquer Quebec and end the French regime in Canada. But some 50 years later, the river's strategic role was reversed. It served as a protective moat, helped to turn back American forces trying to annex Canada to the newly formed U.S.

Rafting to Quebec. In the long era of peace that has reigned over it ever since, the river became a great commercial waterway. Fisheries thrived in its waters. Harvests of cod, whale and eels were yielded by the salt tide that rolls upstream from the Atlantic; sturgeon, whitefish and trout teemed in the fresh-water lakes. The virgin forests on its shores fed the pioneer lumber industry with log rafts the size of small islands floating downstream to be loaded in ships at Quebec.

The fertile river valley and lake fronts made ideal farm land, free of the flooding that plagues settlers along most of the world's great rivers. The spring flood on the vast St. Lawrence is only 10 ft. (v. 50 ft. on the Mississippi and 100 ft. on China's Yangtze).

By the late 19th century, when the farms of the U.S. and Canadian west began to flourish, and when iron ore was discovered in Minnesota's Mesabi Range, a new rush of traffic poured down the Great Lakes waterway. Canals and locks were built to detour ships around Niagara Falls and other navigation bottlenecks. Fleets of shallow-draft lake boats began to carry millions of tons of western wheat and beef downstream for transshipment to Europe, and cargoes of Mesabi ore for the steel mills of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Ontario. Eventually, the U.S.-Canadian locks at Sault Ste. Marie were handling more freight than the combined total passing through the Panama and Suez canals.

Powerful Lobby. Great as the water way's traffic was, men of vision on both sides of the border began to dream of making it even greater. Why not deepen the channels, they asked, and build big ger canals so that ocean ships could sail inland to the head of the Great Lakes? By 1895, the idea of a vast inland sea way caught on and government discussions about building it began.

Canadian opinion favored the seaway almost from the outset, but in the U.S. it became one of the longest, most stubbornly fought issues ever introduced in Congress. U.S. railroads, East Coast ports and industries, fearing heavy losses if traffic were diverted to the St. Lawrence, formed a powerful lobby that managed to block the project for half a century. Every U.S. President from Wilson to Eisenhower came out in favor of it. But Congress after Congress turned it down; eight seaway measures were pigeonholed or defeated outright between 1934 and 1952.

Maximum Pressure. After World War II, new factors tipped the scales in the seaway's favor. Mesabi's iron ore dwindled, and a rich, new field was developed in Canada's Quebec-Labrador area. The inland water route was the shortest way--and the safest in wartime--to bring the vital Quebec-Labrador ore to Midwestern U.S. steel mills.

Finally, in 1951, the Canadian government applied the maximum pressure, passing legislation to go it alone and build an all-Canadian seaway if the U.S. delayed any longer. The challenge cracked the opposition, and Congress passed the seaway bill last May (TIME, May 17, 1954).

The actual work of building the seaway is now under way. The U.S. Seaway Corporation, headed by Lewis Castle, 65, a Duluth banker and longtime seaway proponent, is directing the work on the U.S. side. A newly formed Seaway Authority, bossed by Lionel Chevrier, onetime federal Minister of Transport, is carrying out the Canadian operation.

By the time it is finished, the seaway and power project will cost more than $1 billion. Canada will pay slightly more than 50%, the U.S. slightly less; the two countries will split the seaway tolls in the same proportion to pay off their investment.

Most of the money will be spent in the International Rapids sections, a 46-mile stretch of river on the New York-Ontario border. Two canals, one eight miles long, the other one mile long, will be built around the rapids, and a system of power dams will be set up, with their output divided equally between the Province of Ontario and New York state. Elsewhere along the waterway, dredging and modernization of existing locks and canals will be done so that a minimum 27-ft. channel will eventually run all the way from the Atlantic to the western tip of Lake Superior. When it is ready, 75% of the world's ships--all but the biggest ocean liners--can sail to the center of the continent.

Every major city on the seaway route is planning waterfront improvements to attract shipping. Chicago will start work this summer on a $22.5 million dock expansion program; Toronto already has built a new million-dollar freight terminal, and is filling in waterfront sites for two more. Cleveland, Toledo, Duluth, Buffalo, Hamilton, Montreal and Quebec all have laid plans to better their harbors and build bigger docks. More than 40,000,000 tons of ocean cargo are expected to clear through the seaway in its first year of operation, yielding an average of $1 a ton in harbor fees and loading charges to the various seaway ports. At that rate, the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes cities expect to get their money back fast when the seaway dream is a thriving reality.

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