THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 
WATERWAYS#* 
The St. Lawrence System —The province is particularly favoured 
in its waterways. Foremost in this regard is the St. Lawrence river, 
navigable for large ocean liners as far up as Montreal, approximately 
1,000 miles from the ocean, during seven and a half months in the year. 
It furnishes an outlet for the commerce of central Canada. Quebec is a 
port of call for ocean liners going to Montreal and the port of debarkation 
for emigrants from Great Britain and Europe. Montreal is one of the 
great ports of the world, standing first as a grain handling port and in 
point of foreign trade being second on the American continent only to 
New York. Approximately one-third of Canada’s exports and imports 
pass through it yearly It has the most modern facilities for handling 
grain and other cargoes, such as nine 100-ton electric freight locomotives 
and eleven car unloading machines, and it provides 16 miles of waterfront 
on each side of the St. Lawrence with dockage capable of accommodating 
over 100 ocean vessels. An electric belt-line railway nearly 70 miles in 
length connected with the large steam railway lines serves the entire 
waterfront. The development of the port has been carried out at a cost 
of $50,000,000, and is in charge of a Board of Harbour Commissioners 
appointed by the Dominion Government. Plans for additional facilities 
involving a capital expenditure of $12,000,000 are in hand. Four large 
fireproof terminal grain elevators, with a combined capacity of 15,000,000 
bushels, are operated by the Harbour Commissioners. The Harbour 
facilities include also a cold storage warehouse of 4,628,000 cubic feet 
capacity, equipped and constructed on the most modern and hygienic 
principles. From 1850 to 1888 the dredging of the Ship channel was under 
the jurisdiction of the Harbour Commissioners, and during this period 
the depth of the channel was increased from 12 feet to 271 feet. Since 
1888, when the Government took charge of the deepening of the St. 
Lawrence, the depth of the waterway leading to Montreal has been in- 
creased from 273% feet to 30 feet and a 35-foot channel is now being dredged. 
The new Montreal Harbour bridge, in course of building, crosses the St. 
Lawrence river from north to south shore. It is a highway and tramway 
structure two miles long and will be one of the world’s longest and most 
useful bridges. 
Lumber-Driving Rivers.—Many of the tributaries of the St. Law- 
rence flowing south from the Laurentian plateau are of great service in 
floating logs, lumber and pulpwood to the mills. The more important 
of these lumber-driving rivers are the Ottawa, which forms a large portion 
of the boundary between Quebec and Ontario, the St. Maurice which 
taps a country rich in lumber and pulpwood, and the Saguenay with its 
tributaries. The Ottawa is a large river navigable by river steamers 
TF fis He the Harbour Commissioners of Montreal.