Dundurn Press, Toronto, 2010
256 pp., illus., $35 hardcover
A double review with The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project: An Oral History of the Greatest Construction Show on Earth
by Claire Puccia Parham
Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, N.Y., 2009
328 pp., illus., $34.95 hardcover
With the fiftieth anniversary in 2009 of the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway, it is no surprise that several books were published to commemorate the achievement. Two noteworthy additions to the literature on the subject are Canadian historian Ronald Stagg’s The Golden Dream and American historian Claire Puccia Parham’s The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project.
Stagg provides a comprehensive look at the full four-hundred-year history of the canal systems built to develop an inland waterway linking the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes. He divides his book into four time periods: canals built prior to 1848; later canals built up to 1932; the early twentieth-century negotiations for the construction of the 1950s seaway project; and the construction era itself.
It’s a solid political history account, emphasizing trade and commerce, defence, and nation building as key drivers behind the seaway’s construction and growth. However, Stagg concludes that for many communities along the route the golden dream of enhanced economic prosperity remains elusive.
Parham focuses exclusively on the 1954 – 1959 construction project, recounting “the greatest construction show on earth” through the oral histories of the men who worked on the seaway and their families. Hers is a more personal account of the daily challenges of technology, weather, and politics, as she weaves together the recollections of the more than fifty people she interviewed.
Where Stagg offers insight into the motivations and machinations behind the project, Parham’s account provides a richer understanding of the cultural and social impact of the project on workers and on seaway communities.
Another recent book on this topic that merits mention is journalist Jeff Alexander’s Pandora’s Locks: The Opening of the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Seaway, which concentrates on environmental effects.
— Deborah Morrison (Read bio)
Deborah Morrison is the executive director of SEVEC and the former president and CEO of Canada’s History Society.