The St. Lawrence Seaway, a famous transport project that didn’t produce expected economic benefits and created unexpected environmental problems, is the subject of today’s #stampoftheday. The stamp, is a 4-cent stamp, jointly issued with a similar Canadian stamp, on June 26, 1959, the day that Queen Elizabeth II and President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally opened the seaway by addressing crowds in Saint-Lambert, Quebec and taking with a short cruise on part of the seaway aboard the royal yacht HMY Britannia after

A 186-mile set of locks, canals, and channels along the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and Lake Ontario, as well as a canal 27-mile long canal connecting Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, the Seaway was the last link in a 2,340 mile long system that allows oceangoing vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, as far inland as Duluth, Minnesota at the western end of Lake Superior.

The seaway’s dedication came more than 60 years after it was first proposed and came after decades of plans for a binational system endorsed by every U.S. president from Wilson to Eisenhower. Backers were convinced a nautical link would lead to development of the communities and economies of the Great Lakes region by permitting the passage of oceangoing ships that would carry grain and other commodities, such as iron ore, to Europe. But the plans ran into a variety of obstacles, notably opposition from interests representing harbors on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and internal waterways and from the railroad associations. The railroads carried freight and goods between the coastal ports and the Great Lakes cities.

Finally, plans were approved in 1954 and over the next five years, about 22,000 workers, created the seaway and a related series of dams to provide inexpensive hydroelectric power. Building the dams needed for the project required the flooding of a large section of land along the river, which displaced over 6500 residents, most of them residents of several small towns and hamlets on the Canadian side in Ontario and the village of Louisville Landing in New York State. Most of the Canadians displaced by projects (and many of their homes) were relocated to the newly created towns of Long Sault, Ingleside, and Iroquois

The seaway’s opening is often credited with making the Erie Canal obsolete and causing the severe economic decline of several cities along the canal in Upstate New York. However, by the turn of the 20th century, the Erie Canal had been largely supplanted by the railroads, which had been constructed across New York and could carry freight more quickly and cheaply. So arguably, upstate New York’s economic decline was precipitated by numerous factors, only some of which had to do with the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

The seaway did not have the economic impact envisioned by its backers largely because Europe is no longer a major grain importer. Rather, large U.S. export shipments are now going to South America, Asia, and Africa, destinations that make Gulf and West Coast ports more critical to 21st-century grain exports. As a result, while ships using the seaway move about 222 million tons of cargo per year, less than 7 percent of that cargo is headed overseas and less than four percent of US grain exports move through the Seaway. Moreover, the Seaway appears to have fostered the introduction of numerous invasive species of aquatic animals into the Great Lakes Basin. The zebra mussel has been most damaging in the Great Lakes and through its invasion of related rivers, waterways, and city water facilities. As Philip Baumal, a retired Iowa State University transport economics professor noted in 2005, the Seaway “probably did make sense, at about the time it was constructed and conceived, but since then everything has changed.”

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.