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Farren’s Point, Ontario traces its history back to the 1790s when Charles Curtis Farren Sr. settled in the area.
By the mid-1800s, the community boasted a population of over 300 people.
As the 19th century drew to a close, the village had two hotels, two inns, a bakery, several taverns, a marble shop and a blacksmith shop.
The community was thriving.
This is where, in 1891, a child named Cyril Joseph Denneny was born and he went on to win the Stanley Cup five times and became the all-time leading scorer in the NHL upon his retirement in 1929.
He is easily the most famous person to come from the community.
But you won’t find any monuments honoring him in Farren’s Point.
His childhood home hasn’t been turned into a museum where you can see the spot where the hockey great first began to dream of hockey stardom.
In fact, you can’t visit this community at all.
At least, the way it once was.
If you want to see it, you need to put on some scuba equipment.
That’s because in 1958, one year before Cy Denneny was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, every resident of the community was displaced.
Their homes were bulldozed.
The businesses were razed to the ground.
The trees were cut down.
Farren’s Point was essentially wiped off the map.
Once it was gone, the waters of the St. Lawrence River flowed through it.
Before long, the community was submerged beneath its waves.
But this was not an act by mother nature.
Men did this.
And now only sidewalks and foundations exist of Farran’s Point under the river’s waters.
It was one of ten communities, the Lost Villages as they are called, to be permanently submerged in the name of progress.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx, and the story behind the St. Lawrence Seaway!
To begin our story, we need to journey back in time a few thousand years.
The last ice age lasted from 115,000 to 11,700 years ago.
The peak of that very cold time was 21,000 years ago. That’s when almost all of Canada except for much of modern-day British Columbia, was covered by ice sheets that were upwards of 3.2 kilometres thick over present-day Nunavut and thinner near the edges south of the Great Lakes.
That was a lot of frozen water, and a lot of weight pushing down on the earth below.
Around 20,000 years ago, those immense ice sheets began to melt in a process that took nearly 10,000 years.
As the ice sheets melted, they retreated north, leaving behind a lot of water.
This is how many of our largest lakes, including Lake Winnipeg and the Great Lakes were formed.
Other bodies of water that were formed then are now mere remnants of what they once were, like The Champlain Sea.
The Champlain Sea formed from glacial meltwater about 13,000 years ago and stretched from what we know today as Ottawa to Montreal, and up to Quebec City.
There was a time when whales swam where the Parliament Buildings are now because at its largest, it was 55,000 square-kilometres in size.
Within the waters of the Champlain Sea, a river was waiting to be born, the St. Lawrence.
The sea has been created by massive ice sheets that pressed down on the Earth below it and with them gone the land rebounded and levels rose higher and higher year by year. It took 3,000 years, but eventually the Champlain Sea was gone, and what remained was the St. Lawrence River which today is 500 kilometres long, 928 kilometres if we include its estuary.
Water from the Great Lakes flows out and eventually finds its way to the ocean via the St. Lawrence River. That isn’t a quick process.
A drop of water from Lake Superior on its western edge takes 200 years to reach the Atlantic.
Possibly more than any other river in Canada, the St. Lawrence has played an important role in our history, from the pre-colonial era onwards.
For First Nations, the river was a vital trading route which covered hundreds of kilometres.
Nations along the river have many different names for the St. Lawrence.
The Algonquins called it Magtogoek, meaning Walking Path, but most of the names for the river reflect exactly what it is, a great river.
The modern name for the river came from two men, Jacques Cartier and, later, Samuel de Champlain.
Jacques Cartier arrived at the gulf of the river on Aug. 10 in 1534, on the feast day of Saint Lawrence, the patron saint of librarians.
He returned to England before venturing any further west. But the gulf had a name.
Then Jacques Cartier navigated up the river on his second voyage to North America in 1535, he believed that he had found the Northwest Passage and a route to the Pacific Ocean.
He was a bit off on that assessment.
When he reached river rapids outside modern-day Montreal, he named the rapids La Chine, the French word for China.
Those rapids put an end to any hope of sailing from the Atlantic Ocean to the interior of North America and the Great Lakes.
At least for a while.
For the next few decades, French explorers called the river the Grand fleuve de Hochelaga and Grand riviere du Canada.
In 1604, Samuel de Champlain recorded the river’s name as fleuve Saint-Laurent on a map, extending the name of the gulf to the name of the river itself.
And thus, the Saint Lawrence River’s name was born.
A century and a half after Cartier first reached the La Chine Rapids, work to bypass them began.
In 1680, a Montreal seminary began to dig a short 1.5-metre-deep canal for canoes to use.
A small step but it was a start.
Ten years later, the New France Colonial government began the process of building a canal to allow ships to bypass the rapids. Due to costs and logistics, the canals did not go far beyond the planning stage.
A man named Gideon de Casson attempted to build a canal in 1700, but he went bankrupt halfway through.
Little was done for the next half century.
Then New France was conquered by the British in 1763 following the Seven Years’ War, and the British finally decided to do something about those pesky rapids.
But not right away.
It took until after the American Revolutionary War which took place from 1775 to 1783 for Britain to build canals to bypass the rapids.
Britain was worried about an American attack along the border, and getting ships past Montreal was key to the defense along present-day southern Ontario.
The British built four small canals connecting nearby Lake St. Louis and Lake St. Francis at Montreal to aid the movement of narrow-draft ships While these small canals helped, they were only .76 metres deep, with five locks that measured 1.83 metres wide.
Yet, that was all that Montreal had for the next few decades, until a man with a love of sugar came along.
In 1816, a penniless young man named John Redpath arrived on a ship from Scotland in Quebec City and then set off on foot to Montreal.
He must have been determined because he apparently made that walk barefoot.
Although that a story has most likely been embellished over time and he probably just had shoes with a lot of holes in them.
Redpath had trained as a stonemason in England and that proved to be his path to success in Montreal.
With a strong work ethic and good sense of business, he slowly grew a construction business as the city developed.
Only five years after he arrived, he was part of a new consortium that formed in 1820 to build a canal to bypass the Lachine Rapids.
The man who arrived in Canada penniless was the main contractor.
The consortium bought the land for the canal from the Roman Catholic Sulpician Order, who had left it unused for about two decades.
Ground was broken on the historic canal project on July 17, 1821.
Four years later, the canal was completed, and the first stage of the eventual St. Lawrence Seaway was concluded.
It measured 14 kilometres long and had seven locks, each 30 metres long and six metres wide.
The impact on Montreal was immense as ships could now travel past the Lachine Rapids and brought with them a lot more trade so factories were built along the banks of the canal and people flooded to the city to find work’.
In 1832 Montreal was incorporated as a city.
By 1871, there were 130,000 living in the city, and it was the most populous city in Canada.
That title would hold until 1998 when Toronto took over.
Meanwhile the Lachine Canal also helped raise John Redpath’s profile and he was commissioned for new projects including the first buildings of McGill University and the stunning Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal.
In 1856, he founded Redpath Sugar and built the first sugar refinery complex in Canada.
By the time he died in 1869, he had seen the annual ship traffic passing through the canal go from 600 vessels in its first year, to 13,000 ships.
The Lachine Canal was a good first step, but to the west another barrier existed and this one made the Lachine Rapids look like a relaxing bubble bath…
Horseshoe falls rises 57 metres in height and 790 metres in length on the Canadian side, making Niagara Falls a sight to behold and the most powerful waterfall in the entire continent.
Every single second, 6,400 cubic metres of water cascades over the falls as Lake Erie drains into Lake Ontario.
This is the equivalent of three Olympic swimming pools every second.
The falls have existed for 10,000 years, formed by the same retreating ice sheets that formed the Great Lakes.
When they first formed, the falls were located 11 kilometres to the south, near present-day Queenston, Ontario.
Erosion has slowly moved the falls to their present location.
And make sure you go see them because in about 50,000 years, they will have eroded all the way to Lake Erie and will cease to exist.
To bypass the falls, a canal was needed that could link Lake Ontario with Lake Erie.
This is where William Hamilton Merritt comes in.
He was a businessman in the area and a veteran of the War of 1812.
After the war, he bought a store, sawmill, and grist mill on Twelve-Mile Creek, near Niagara Falls.
Unfortunately, the water levels of the creek were unpredictable, and that made operating his mill difficult.
He turned his attention to the idea of building a canal that could not only bring more business to his mills, but also keep them running with a stable source of running water.
In 1818, he borrowed an instrument called a water level to survey a potential route and with a group of neighbours, they planned out a three-kilometre route to meet the Welland River.
On July 4, 1818, a petition was sent to the Upper Canada Legislature to provide permission for the construction of a canal between Twelve Mile Creek and the Welland River.
And then Merritt waited.
And waited.
Until 1823 when an engineer named Hiram Tibbets conducted a formal survey.
His report suggested a channel about 1.2 metres below the surface level of the Welland River.
This channel could run from Port Robinson to Allanburg, then follow Twelve Mile Creek to DeCew’s Falls and then decline to an escarpment and continue to Port Dalhousie on Lake Ontario.
The following year, the Welland Canal Company was formed with $150,000 in capitalization.
The route was adjusted somewhat as well, running from Port Robinson to Allanburg, then north through a series of canal locks to Merritton.
On Nov. 30, 1824, 200 people watched them broke ground on work that would take five years to complete, and by 1829, the Welland Canal was finished and a new connection between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario was formed.
While the Lachine Rapids were bypassed, troublesome rapids existed just 100 kilometers downriver near Cornwall, Ontario so the British government commissioned the construction of the Cornwall Canal in 1834.
It took nine years to build, and when it was finished it bypassed the Long Sault Rapids, running for 18 kilometres with six locks.
But there was another ongoing problem.
Ships kept getting larger, but the canals just stayed the same size.
From the west a ship could travel from Lake Superior to Lake Ontario thanks to the Welland Canal, but the St. Lawrence Canal system stood as a bottleneck to further passage into the ocean.
To deal with this growing issue the government embarked on one of its largest public work projects to that point.
It was going to enlarge all existing canals and locks to 4.2 metres in depth.
This alleviated that bottleneck, but progress did not stop and a few years later they ran into the same problem.
The companies that hauled the cargo and built the ships wanted something done.
If a ship could travel from the Atlantic to Lake Superior, money and time would time be saved In the 1890s, commercial interests pressured for a binational deep-water throughway.
Business may move fast, but governments move slow.
It took until 1909 for the first joint U.S.-Canadian Deep Waterways Commission to be formed to study the possibility of building a Seaway.
This led to the formation of a joint commission, but further movement towards a Seaway stalled due to the First World War.
In 1921, a report was commissioned on how the efficiency of water navigation could be increased in the St. Lawrence River.
It was prepared by Colonel William P. Wooten of the US Army Corps of Engineers and W.A. Bowden, the Chief Engineer of the Department of Railways and Canals in Canada.
In June 1921, the report was presented to the International Joint Commission.
Public hearings followed, and the final report was issued in December 1921.
The Montreal Gazette stated,
“The Wooten Bowden report calls for the erection of a series of lift locks and guard locks, deepening the channels, dams, extensive flooding, dikes, control works, embankments, etc. to make the St. Lawrence navigable from Lake St. Louis to Prescott by a channel 25 feet deep and varying in width from 200 to 600 feet.”
At the time, Canada was governed by William Lyon Mackenzie King and the Liberals.
King was reluctant to proceed with the project because he faced opposition in some areas of Ontario and Quebec. There was concern among residents that deepening the St. Lawrence River would result in more frequent floods.
Another issue was that under the plan two cemeteries would be flooded permanently.
In one of those cemeteries Sir James Whitney, the premier of Ontario from 1905 to 1914, was buried.
The Ottawa Journal wrote that this shouldn’t be a problem, it stated:
“George Washington had been moved once and if the United States could bear that, Ontario should not object to the removal of Sir James Whitney.”
It didn’t matter, because no progress made after the report.
For the rest of the 1920s, the topic of a St. Lawrence Seaway faded.
In 1930, the Liberals lost the federal election to the Conservatives, R.B. Bennett became prime minister.
Two years later, Bennett signed a treaty of intent with the United States for the seaway project. In November 1932, the treaty was submitted to the U.S. Senate and talks continued until a vote was held on March 14, 1934.
The Senate was unable to get two-thirds of a majority for ratifying the treaty and it failed.
When Bennett lost the 1935 election to William Lyon Mackenzie King and the Liberals, efforts to draft a treaty continued.
Throughout the 1930s, further attempts were made but opposition now came from Premier Mitchell Hepburn in Ontario.
Macleans wrote:
“Mr. Hepburn didn’t want the St. Lawrence Seaway built. He thought the whole thing a waste of money and quite unnecessary.”
Since the federal government needed the cooperation of both Quebec and Ontario, without Hepburn, the plan for a St. Lawrence Seaway could not go forward.
Meanwhile in the United States, efforts were in place to drum up support for the project.
In 1936, the Great Lakes Harbors Association and Great Lakes Tidewaters Commission, along with delegates from eight Great Lakes states met with US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to obtain his support. He stated he was open to the idea, but as before, things didn’t move far beyond that point.
Two years later in 1938, Hepburn did a complete 180 on his opposition to the Seaway and became anxious to get the project moving forward.
At the time, Hepburn was dealing with low-popularity due to his crackdown of the General Motors plant strike in Oshawa, Ontario. He had organized scabs to put an end to the strike.
Hepburn now needed the project because not only could it create jobs, but possibly raise his popularity in the province.
In January 1940 an agreement was reached between Canada and the United States. One year later, Roosevelt and William Lyon Mackenzie King made an agreement to build a joint hydro and navigation works.
Macleans wrote,
“Uncle Sam came back and asked the same old question. This time he had a pretty determined look in his eye. He also had a new reason for doing the St. Lawrence job. The new reason was national defense.”
President Roosevelt seemed eager to get the Seaway built at the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway Conference in Detroit, he said.
“The United States needs the St. Lawrence Seaway for defense. The United States needs this great landlocked sea as a secure haven in which it will be able to build ships and more ships to protect our trade and our shores.”
Despite the support of the president, any bill to join Canada in construction of a St. Lawrence Seaway failed to pass Congress and neither Mackenzie King, nor Roosevelt, would live to see the day when the seaway would break ground.
But then after the Second World War, things changed.
The population was booming, and trade internationally was increasing at an exponential rate as economies sky rocketed.
Canada was now led by Louis St. Laurent, who took office in 1948 from William Lyon Mackenzie King retired. He saw the benefit to the project and was eager to move on construction.
Down in the United States, Harry S. Truman was president. He took over following the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945.
While Truman wanted the Seaway, the rest of his government didn’t.
On Aug. 26, 1951, a US Congressional Committee rejected the St. Lawrence Seaway Pact.
After two decades of refusals Canadians were impatient The federal government decided that if the United States was not going to be part of it, then Canada was just going to build the Seaway itself and reap the rewards from it completely.
This attitude was shared by K. Koezva, a hydro employee in Niagara Falls.
On Sept. 7, 1951, Ontario Premier Leslie Frost received a $10 bill in a letter a donation from Koezva towards funding the St. Lawrence Seaway.
The letter said,
“In order to do my share as a Canadian, I have decided to work overtime and contribute my earnings towards an All-Canadian St. Lawrence Seaway.”
On Sept. 28, 1951, the two leaders met, and Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent told President Harry Truman that the Canadian government would construct the seaway completely within Canadian territory.
This was a concern for Truman who could see that it would give Canada all the revenue from such a Seaway as opposed to splitting the revenue should they share the territory.
Regardless, Canada would grant the United States permission to use it.
When news got out about the ultimatum, there was a harsh reaction from Americans Senator George Aiken of Vermont, a supporter of a Seaway project, said,
“It is a disgrace for the United States to force Canada to do this for her own protection. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.”
Truman issued a statement stating his preference of a joint construction project.
Representative Tom Pickett of Texas said,
“He is finally showing a little judgement.”
As America warmed to the joint project, Canada was not about to wait.
On Dec. 21, 1951, the Canadian federal government created the Crown Corporation St. Lawrence Seaway Authority.
President Truman wanted US involvement but struggled to garner support.
When a bill was put forward in the US Senate in early 1952 Truman said,
“If Canada constructs the waterway, then no doubt some future administration will allow New York and Quebec to obtain all the power. This is one of the worst things that could happen in the northeast section of the country.”
His call to action fell on deaf ears and the motion was killed in the Senate.
Instead, the Senate passed a motion 43 to 40 to return the bill to its foreign relations committee for further study.
Canadian Transport Minister Lionel Chevrier said nothing would slow down Canadian plans to build the Seaway.
By the end of 1952, Truman was again appealing to Congress.
Representative Harry McGregor of Ohio, a major critic, shifted gears in January 1953 and would agree to the project if terms were worked out in advance on sharing construction and maintenance costs.
On Jan. 12, 1953, debate began in the US Senate and a bill emerged from the House of Representatives Committee of Public Works on Feb. 22, 1954.
Unfortunately, Truman would never see the Seaway built as president, nor would it become a part of his legacy.
On Jan. 20, 1953, Dwight Eisenhower replaced him as President of the United States.
As for that bill introduced in February, it was approved by the House and Senate in May 1954.
The long road to American involvement in the project, had finally come to an end.
On May 13, 1954, President Eisenhower signed the St. Lawrence Seaway Bill, also known as the Wiley-Dondero Seaway Act.
Joining Eisenhower at the signing was Canadian Ambassador A.D.P. Heeney
Eisenhower used nine pens to sign the bill. Three were made from wood recovered from Fort Detroit in Michigan, which was the last British-held forts in the United States.
Eisenhower said,
“Now work can begin on the great project.”
Aug. 10, 1954, saw groundbreaking ceremonies take place on the American side of the border, Governor Thomas Dewey of New York State pressed a button to set off a dynamite charge while on the Canadian side, the ceremony was less explosive.
Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent dug into the dirt with a shovel, along with Ontario Premier Leslie Frost.
The Montreal Star reported,
“Mr. St. Laurent, after breaking ground, said that the ceremonies had been characterized by the spirit of friendship and harmony which Canada and the US have come to accept as normal. The St. Lawrence River has become a bond rather than a barrier, he said, and the project will bind together all residents of the St. Lawrence Valley.”
Now the work really began.
One of the biggest parts of the project was the construction of the 2,090-megawatt power dam near Cornwall, Ontario.
It came as a mixed blessing for Cornwall because although it was expected to help in the future, especially thanks to the $1 million filtration plant the city received as part of the agreement; there were several problems for the city during construction.
The city was flooded with workers, who had to live in trailers and rented rooms due to a housing shortage. Rents skyrocketed and many families were pushed out.
As many as 5,000 people traveled to see the construction t, causing traffic chaos.
On paydays, construction workers were often rowdy at the end of the workweek and kept the small police force very busy.
Construction finished on July 1, 1958, when 27 tonnes of explosives were used to demolish the cofferdam that diverted the St. Lawrence River away from the new dam It took only four days for the new hydro plant to become operational and begin providing power to Ontario.
There were many changes to old infrastructure because of the St. Lawrence Seaway construction.
Bridges had to be rebuilt to allow for larger ships.
At the Jacques Cartier Bridge in Montreal, the piers were enlarged, and the bridge was raised by120 feet.
A new higher span was built along the old bridge then it was raised with hydraulic jacks and detached from the bridge frame.
The new span was then lifted and fitted in place.
This process of swapping bridge decks took only two hours.
The Montreal Gazette reported,
“This spring of 1955 may seem like just another spring in Montreal, but already huge bulldozers and other heavy equipment are about to move onto two projects bordering the South Shore. Last week, the Authority called for tenders for excavation and construction of the Seaway along about 4,900 feet in the river opposite Montreal, extending to the upper end of the present ship channel.”
In Ontario and Quebec, rivalries between towns sprung up as they all vied for a share of what the Seaway could provide.
Both Toronto and Montreal said they would be the Gateway of the Seaway.
Toronto Mayor Fred Gardiner stated,
“Toronto will have a population of two million in 15 years. Nothing can stop us from being one of the most important cities in the world.”
He turned out to be right in that regard. Toronto passed two million people in population in 1971.
As a result of the construction of the Cornwall dam 15,400 hectares of land were flooded creating Lake St. Lawrence?
Well, there were several communities, railways and highways that went through that land.
All would be lost to the lake.
Aultsville, Dickinson’s Landing, Farran’s Point, Maple Grove, Milles Roches, Moulinette, Santa Cruz, Sheek’s Island, Wales, and Woodlands were all lost beneath the waves.
These communities would become known as The Lost Villages. Residents were given market value for their homes, although many felt they were cheated because the Seaway plan had decreased their property values before the government compensated them.
Two communities were relocated, rather than demolished.
Iroquois was a larger townsite, and the decision was made to move its population to a new site and 152 buildings, mostly homes, were relocated.
The community is now known as South Dundas after its amalgamation with Matilda, Williamsburg and Morrisburg in 1998.
Morrisburg was the second community relocated because one third of the community would be lost to the St. Lawrence Seaway project, including its Main Street and original business district.
A total of 87 homes were moved and the entire downtown business district was demolished and relocated to a shopping plaza.
The Canadian National Railway Line was also moved 1.1 kilometres north of its original location.
Part of the flooded area includes Crysler’s Farm, the location of a major battle during the War of 1812 but the monument marking the battle’s location was moved.
Today, a few remnants of these villages remain and sidewalks and building foundations can be seen under the water or even along the shoreline when water levels are low.
In all, 525 homes, 6,500 people, 64 kilometres of railway and 56 kilometres of highway were relocated while 20,000 acres of farmland was lost.
The Akwesasne People lost 1,200 acres of reserve land and 15,000 acres of traditional land.
Unlike the residents of the Lost Villages, the Akwesasne were not consulted, and they were not compensated for their losses until 2008 when they were monetarily compensated.
Meanwhile, by the summer of 1956, over $122 million had been spent on phase one of the project, which included the excavation and dredging, and was well on its way.
Phase two, which included the mechanical works, was just starting.
Even locations far from the Seaway were excited to enjoy the benefits of the Seaway.
In Labrador, the iron ore produced in the area would be shipped to Pennsylvania and then inland through rail.
This came with high transportation costs and the maximum demand for Labrador ore was about 10 million tons per year as a result.
With the Seaway, the ore could get into the interior much easier and cheaper, allowing for upwards of 20 to 30 million more tons of ore to be sold by the province.
On April 25, 1959, the St. Lawrence Seaway opened.
The Windsor Star reported quote:
“Opening today to ships from the seven seas, the new waterway has seven steps leading from this riverfront metropolis to land-bound harbours in the five Great Lakes.”
Macleans wrote:
“With the Seaway completed there will be no physical barrier to prevent British ocean ships from sailing up the Great Lakes to Fort William and loading grain there.”
Each lock was 800 feet long and made of concrete and circumvented obstacles in the river such as rapids and the dam. The first step for a ship entering the Seaway was to go under the Jacques Cartier Bridge, then into the Lachine Canal.
The first lock lifted the boat 15 feet, while the second lifted it 30 feet.
Then would traverse Lake St. Louis into another channel with two more locks, then into Lake St. Francis and two more locks.
On the first day, 68 ships stretched 225 kilometres down the Seaway.
On the ships were Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, 118 Canadian MPs, 21 Senators and seven US congressmen.
On June 26, 1959, the official public opening ceremony was attended by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, President Dwight Eisenhower, and Queen Elizabeth II.
President Eisenhower said:
“May this example be never forgotten by us; may it never be ignored by others. For in the reasonable resolution of the acute international problems of our time rests the single hope for world prosperity and happiness in peace, with justice for all.”
Queen Elizabeth II said.
“This partnership is most agreeably symbolized Mr. President, in the fact that you and I have joined together to perform this ceremony today.”
Over 40,000 people were in attendance.
The Sault Star wrote that 300 Roman Catholic church bells, the horns, and sirens of 50 freighters, joined the cheers of the crowd to cheer the opening of the Seaway.
The total construction of the Seaway cost $470 million, $336.2 million of which was paid for by the Canadian government. The cost was mitigated by a toll system that was expected to compensate for construction costs within 50 years.
22,000 people were employed at one point or another.
Today, the Seaway generates $3.4 billion in business in the United States and Canada. Each year, over 250 million tons of cargo moves through the seaway.
Not everything with the Seaway has been beneficial though.
The opening made the American Erie Canal obsolete, which caused a severe economic decline in Upstate New York.
It also had an adverse effect on the environment.
With so many ships moving through the Seaway, it has provided a conduit for many aquatic species to reach areas outside their typical habitat.
Invasive species have become a serious problem.
The zebra mussel has become one of the most damaging invasive species in the Great Lakes. They were first detected in Canada in the Great Lakes in 1988. It is believed the species was introduced by the ballast water of ocean-going ships.
The zebra mussel can grow so densely that it covers native mussels in the water. They are responsible for the near extinction of many species in the Great Lakes by outcompeting species for food and even suffocating native mussels and clams.
They can block pipelines and water intake systems for municipal water supplies and hydroelectric dams.
It is estimated that the zebra mussel has cost businesses and communities $5 billion since 1988. Power companies account for $3 billion of that.
While attempts to stop their spread have been initiated, the species has reached as far as Lake Winnipeg and shows no signs of slowing down.
Information from Canadian Encyclopedia, GreatLakes-Seaway.com, Macleans, Wikipedia, Ottawa Journal, Montreal Gazette, Montreal Star, National Post, Windsor Star, Calgary Herald,
