The Golden Dream: A History of the St. Lawrence Seaway by Ronald Stagg (review)

124 The Michigan Historical Review complexities of American expansion and the paradoxes found within the consolidation of United States authority over the Great Lakes region. But this brief overview only scratches the surface of the book’s appeal. The continued importance and vitality of the French inhabitants also receive serious attention, highlighted by the essays of Susan SleeperSmith and Keith Widder. The volume does not disappoint from a military perspective either—essays by the late W. J. Eccles, Charles Brodine, Matthew Ward, and Jeff Sieken analyze various elements of the French, British, and American military struggle for control of the region. Economic, religious, and cultural considerations are also explored, and readers of The Michigan Historical Review will be particularly interested in Brian Leigh Dunnigan’s cartographical exploration of the growth and expansion of Detroit, which despite its brevity provides a compelling study of the evolution of a frontier community. Bolstered by high-quality scholarship, The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes continues to make an important contribution to the history of the Midwest, and with the release of the paperback edition, it now promises to reach an even wider audience. Daniel P. Barr Robert Morris University Ronald Stagg. The Golden Dream: A History of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2010. Pp. 296. Bibliography. Index. Maps. Notes. Photographs. Cloth, $35.00; CAD. The completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power project was the culmination of a century-long dream to link Great Lakes’ industries with the Atlantic Ocean. Located on the U.S.-Canadian border between Montreal and Duluth, Minnesota, the Seaway was the largest inland waterway ever completed, and today the Robert MosesRobert H. Saunders Power Dam sends electricity to many areas of New York, Vermont, Quebec, and Ontario. The project’s five sections, constructed between 1954 and 1959, included locks, channels, and dams, whose construction and eventual operation had to be coordinated among the American and Canadian governments, the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, New York State, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Ontario Hydro, and the Power Authority of the State of New York. Book Reviews 125 Dundurn Press commissioned Ronald Stagg, a Ryerson University historian, to write The Golden Dream: A History of the St. Lawrence Seaway to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of inundation day. Although Stagg does not present a clear thesis or argument in his introduction, he does identify the book’s four main goals: to provide a balanced account of the struggle of supporters and politicians to gain political approval and funding for the Seaway, to present a broader explanation of why the United States and Canada built the waterway, to reexamine the conclusions of earlier authors, and to critically analyze the political role of Quebec and Ontario during the debate and construction phases of the project. Overall, Stagg seeks to present the history of the waterway and its alterations to both recreational and expert readers. Unfortunately, however, The Golden Dream primarily merges existing manuscripts about the Seaway, which is valuable for scholars looking for a broad summation of the waterway’s history and the construction of the Seaway and power dam. Stagg begins with an account of Jacques Cartier’s exploration of the area and ends with current shipping issues and expansion plans. As he is not an expert in the field, he borrowed from secondary sources, newspapers, and official reports; in addition, he does not present any new revelations as he promised to do in his introduction. In particular, Stagg relies heavily on Carleton Mabee’s The Seaway Story for his own analysis of the early explorers and the impact of the project on the local populations, and on Lionel Chevrier’s The St. Lawrence Seaway and William R. Willoughby’s The St. Lawrence Waterway: A Study in Politics and Diplomacy for commentary on the fifty years of Canadian and American political debate surrounding the project. What would have made The Golden Dream a more valuable addition to the scholarship of the Seaway would have been an expansion of the author’s poignant last two chapters, “Reassessing the Dream: The Seaway in Operation” and “A Trip Through History: The Canals Today.” It is here, in the book...