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A lifeline of trade and commerce into the heart of North America, the first Welland Canal opened in 1829, an achievement attributed primarily to a St Catharines businessman, William Hamilton MERRITT.

It is virtually landlocked but is joined to the Arctic Ocean to the north by Foxe Channel and Fury and Hecla Strait, and to the Atlantic Ocean on the east by Hudson Strait. Baffin Island lies athwart the entrance to the bay, and Southampton, Coats and Mansel islands are lodged across the northern gap.

Chesterfield Inlet is a narrow, fiordlike arm of the northwest coast of Hudson Bay that stretches 160 km inland to the Thelon River.

James Bay is the southern appendage of Hudson Bay. It is about 160 km wide between Pointe Louis-XIV on the east coast and Cape Henrietta Marie on the west.

The Champlain Sea is a body of saline to brackish water 55 000 km2 that occupied the depressed land of the ST LAWRENCE LOWLAND between Québec City and Brockville, Ont, and extended up the Ottawa River Valley during the late glacial period 12 000 to 10 000 years ago (seeGLACIATION).

The Trent-Severn Waterway system links Lake Ontario (at Trenton) with Lake Huron (at Port Severn on Georgian Bay).

Bay d'Espoir is a fjord-like arm of Hermitage Bay on Newfoundland’s south coast. More than 50 km from mouth to head, Bay d'Espoir — French for “hope” — is ice-free, with sheer cliffs and steep-sided hills rising 180 to 300 m. The bay divides into two principal arms to the north and northeast of Bois Island. Because of the tremendous watershed from a surrounding glacial plateau, the area is the site of a hydroelectric generating plant. Opened in 1967, today the plant has a generating capacity of more than 600 MW.

The St Lawrence Seaway (Great Lakes Waterway) is the system of locks, canals and channels linking the Great Lakes and the St Lawrence River with the Atlantic Ocean.

The following article is an editorial written by The Canadian Encyclopedia staff. Editorials are not usually updated.

When the first sod was turned near Cornwall, Ont., August 10, 1954, it was not so much the beginning of the great ​St Lawrence Seaway as a continuation of centuries of dreams.