The
Saint Lawrence River (French: fleuve Saint-Laurent)
is a large west-to-east flowing river
in the middle latitudes of North America,
connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic
Ocean. It was called Kaniatarowanenneh
("big waterway") in Mohawk.
It traverses the Canadian province of
Quebec and forms part of the border between
the state of New York in the United States
and the province of Ontario in Canada.
The Saint Lawrence River is born at the
outflow of Lake Ontario at Kingston, Ontario.
From there, it passes Brockville, Cornwall,
Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Quebec
City before draining into the Gulf of
Saint Lawrence, the largest estuary in
the world. It runs 1,900 miles (3,058
kilometers) from source to mouth (744
miles or 1,197 km from the outflow of
Lake Ontario). Its drainage area, which
includes the Great Lakes and hence the
world's largest system of fresh water
lakes, has a size of 1.03 million km².
The average discharge at the mouth is
10,400 m³/s.
The
river includes Lac Saint-Louis south of
Montreal, Lac Saint-François at
Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec and Lac
Saint-Pierre east of Montreal. It surrounds
such islands as the Thousand Islands near
Kingston, the Island of Montreal, Île
Jésus (Laval), Île d'Orléans
near Quebec City, and Anticosti Island
north of the Gaspé. Lake Champlain
and the Ottawa, Richelieu, and Saguenay
rivers drain into the St. Lawrence. The
first European to navigate the St. Lawrence
was Jacques Cartier, who on 9 June 1534
first sighted the river and also claimed
New France for Francis I. Until the early
1600s, the French used the name Rivière
du Canada to designate the Saint Lawrence
upstream to Montreal and the Ottawa River
after Montreal. The Saint Lawrence River
served as the main route for exploration
of the North American interior from Europe.
The St. Lawrence was formerly continuously
navigable only as far as Montreal due
to the Lachine Rapids.
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