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The Boundary Waters-Voyageur Waterway extends 250 km along the international boundary extending from the western tip of Lake Superior to Lac La Croix in Ontario's Quetico Provincial Park.

These 2 great journeys were first made just before the end of the 18th century, and by the same man. Alexander Mackenzie reached the mouth of the river which now bears his name in 1789, and was the first European to cross the North American continent (to Bella Coola) in 1793.

Throughout the period of the historical fur trade (early 17th to the mid-19th century), water routes were the natural “highways” of First Nations trappers and European fur traders. Water trading networks connected Indigenous societies from the Atlantic Ocean, along the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes, and then on towards the Hudson Bay watershed. North America’s waterborne geography facilitated intracontinental travel, enabled European expansion and settlement into Indigenous North America, and shaped the contours of Euro-Indigenous relations in the context of the fur trade. These extensive and interconnected systems of rivers, lakes and overland trails criss-crossed Indigenous territories and had been used for generations. At the height of the fur trade, the principal canoe route extended westward from the Island of Montreal through the Great Lakes, and from the northwestern shore of Lake Superior over the height of land into the Hudson Bay watershed. From the Lake Winnipeg basin, Indigenous trappers and European traders fanned out towards the Western Prairies via the Assiniboine, Qu’Appelle and Souris rivers, towards the foothills of the Rocky Mountains via the North and South branches of the Saskatchewan River, and finally towards the Athabasca Country via the Sturgeon-weir River and the Methye Portage.

​The Lachine Canal passes through the southwestern part of the island of Montréal, from the Old Port to the borough of Lachine, where it flows into Lake Saint-Louis.

This article is from our Toronto Feature series. Features from past programs are not updated.

This article is from our Toronto Feature series. Features from past programs are not updated.

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.

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