The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project: An Oral History of the Greatest Construction Show on Earth

Conclusion

312 Conclusion the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway was the greatest construction show ever performed. Twenty-two thousand men and their families migrated to Massena and Cornwall to spend four years constructing the waterway and power dam. During the project contractors and their employees tamed the Long Sault Rapids, excavated tenacious material, and dealt with extreme weather conditions. Working with sketchy plans and faulty concrete, these carpenters, engineers, laborers, and equipment operators completed a project that at the beginning of the twentieth century American and Canadian politicians and engineers had deemed expensive, impossible, and therefore unnecessary. The St. Lawrence Seaway and power dam construction exhibited the ability of men from different backgrounds and the leaders of American and Canadian construction companies and agencies to amicably complete a navigable waterway from Montreal and Lake Erie, full of numerous dredging, lock, and dam projects. Ontario Hydro and the Seaway Authority property agents and carpenters undertook the controversial relocation of thousands of Canadians along with their towns and homes. The project not only changed workers’ and area residents’ lives, but improved the navigational and power production facilities of both nations. It seems only appropriate to remember the men who worked so diligently to make the dream of America’s Fourth Coast a reality. Without them, the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project would still be merely a drawing gathering dust on an aging engineer’s desk. The dedication of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project marked the end of a century-long struggle to construct the largest power and navigational project in the world. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Queen Conclusion   |   313 Elizabeth II presided over the opening ceremony in Montreal on June 26, 1959, attended by dignitaries and members of the media from forty-eight countries. Following the brief festivities, the queen and the president boarded the royal yacht Britannia and proceeded down the river to the St. Lambert Locks and eventually on to Massena. Vice President Richard Nixon joined them the next day to watch the explosion that breached the remaining cofferdam, to dedicate the peace monument at the power dam in Massena, and to attend a luncheon at the Cornwallis Hotel in Cornwall. In his speech Eisenhower affirmed the project as a bilateral anti-Communist effort: “It is above all a magnificent symbol to the entire world of the achievement possible by two democratic nations peacefully working together for the common good.”1 Downstream, before a crowd of fifty thousand, thirty tons of explosives blew two holes in the steel-celled A-2 dam that had held back the raging current of the St. Lawrence River for the last five years. Thirty minutes before the blast, police officers directed traffic near the project overlooks to prevent jams and accidents among the several thousand interested onlookers. Law enforcement also evacuated residents from homes 34. Vice President Nixon, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Lewis G. Castle (administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation), and others at the Eisenhower Lock. Courtesy of St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation. 314   |   The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project within a two-mile radius of the demolition site. Once workers detonated the explosives, it took two and a half days to flood 38,000 acres between the Iroquois Control Dam and the main power structure to initiate power production. The St. Lawrence Seaway officially opened for navigation on June 27, 1959. Vessels up to 730 feet long and 75.6 feet wide could transport iron ore, steel, and grain from the interior ports of both nations to waiting international cargo ships in Montreal. The final cost for the entire project, shared by the United States and Canada, was $1.2 billion dollars. The St. Lawrence Seaway and power dam replaced the old fourteen-foot-deep, thirty-lock canal system with 265 miles of twenty-seven-foot-deep channels , fifteen locks, and an international hydrodam the size of seven American football fields. The dignitaries’ luncheon—attended by 350 guests including New York Governor Averill Harriman; the Honorable Leslie Frost, prime 35. Prince Philip (second from left), Mrs. Richard Nixon, Queen Elizabeth II, Vice President Richard Nixon, and others on the speakers’ stand at the Eisenhower Lock. Courtesy of St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation. Conclusion   |   315 minister of Ontario; Robert Moses, chairman of PASNY; and James Duncan , chairman of Ontario Hydro—marked the culmination of the fourday dedication festivities. Dolores Kormanyos When I was twenty-five...