Page "Saint Lawrence Seaway" Paragraph 3

The first proposals for a binational comprehensive deep waterway along the St. Lawrence came in the 1890s.

In the following decades the idea of a power project became inseparable from the seaway-in fact, the various governments involved believed that the deeper water created by the hydro project were necessary to make the seaway channels feasible.

American proposals for development up to and including the First World War met with little interest from the Canadian federal government.

But the two national governments submitted St. Lawrence plans, and the Wooten-Bowden Report and the International Joint Commission both recommended the project in the early 1920s.

Although the Liberal Mackenzie King was reluctant to proceed, in part because of opposition to the project in Quebec, in 1932 the two countries inked a treaty.

This failed to receive the assent of Congress.

Subsequent attempts to forge an agreement in the 1930s came to naught as the Ontario government of Mitchell Hepburn, along with Quebec, got in the way.

By 1941, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister King made an executive agreement to build the joint hydro and navigation works, but this too failed to receive the assent of Congress.

Proposals for the seaway were met with resistance from railway and port lobbyists in the United States.