Our Own Three Gorges: Would We Built the St. Lawrence Seaway Today?

Almost fifty years ago, President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth opened the St. Lawrence Seaway, built to generate electricity and open Great Lakes ports to to ocean-going ships. 100 square miles of land, including six villages, home to 6,500 people, were submerged, "sacrificed at the altar of shipping and hydro-electric power," as Peter Gorrie of the Star puts it. Robert Moses on the American side, and Robert Saunders on the Canadian, bulldozed it through.

"In the '50s there was no such thing as protests," Jane Craig of the Lost Villages Hist...