to pattim - about the picture you liked - fun with geography

Thinking about the picture you liked, some info to pass along to the class:

The large expanse of water is part of the Saint Lawrence River, a part where it widens out and is called Lac Saint Louis.

You can see the skyscrapers of downtown Montreal in the background, which gives you a sense of the size of this river and lake.

The straight lines of trees are part of the Saint Lawrence Seaway system. This is a system of locks and canals along the river from Montreal to Lake Ontario. The seaway is so important that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip came to give it a formal opening, I think in about 1958 or 1960.
Before it was built, ships had to unload and load at Montreal and everything had to be transported by train or truck to the Great Lakes. Now ships can go straight from the ocean through to Toronto and Chicago and Detroit and Thunder Bay (where they load all the wheat.) All of the midwest USA and central/western Canada depend on this canal system.

The water really is that blue, at least on a good day. It used to be terribly polluted but hard work over the last thirty years has cleaned the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence up to the point that you can actually swim in several places along the river now.

So it’s more than just a pretty picture! I think it’s even prettier when you know about it.

Another fun piece of information: In the old days, the river stayed frozen from about December to about March. Now we have global warming and less ice, and there are big icebreakers to keep the channels open so shipping goes ten to twelve months of the year. But Montreal has kept up a very old tradition: when the first ship of the year arrives (in the old days March, now mid January or February) the mayor of the city presents the ship’s captain with a gold-headed cane.