Seaway (The)

1. noun, in full ‘The St. Lawrence Seaway’ | ‘St. Lawrence Seaway’: a waterway in N. America, which flows for 3, 768 km (2,342 miles) through the Great Lakes and along the course of the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic. Consisting of the navigable parts of the lakes and the rivers connecting them and the St. Lawrence, supplemented by canals to bypass rapids and Niagara Falls, it can be navigated along its entire length by ocean-going vessels. It was inaugurated in 1959 (COD); 2. attributive

1.
“When I was a young lad, back before they opened The Seaway, the traffic over here was heavy.”

“Our island was quite famous for its hay. Then in order to get it to The States, you had to wait ’til the ice froze on what is now The Seaway.”

“He had two or three tugs and lighter barges and so on. A boat would run aground in The Seaway, and he’d be there to hook on and pull it out.”

“There was a big ocean liner coming up The Seaway. We’re up high where we see them all if they come, all the way up through.”

“I can remember next door, before The Seaway went in, the house that was there. See, my aunt and uncle lived there too.”

“I started working for Smith’s. It was after The Seaway went in.”

“Them old freighters I was on were 250 feet … When The Seaway went through, what killed all them freighters? The new big ships, the 730-footers. Inside of five years all the little fellars are gone.”

“When they dredged for The Seaway, Tom let guys stay here while they were working down off the Foot, eh.”

“He had the pilot boat for awhile that would put the pilots on and off the lake boats. And before The Seaway, all the ships come up the north side of Wolfe Island.”

“What the heck’s the name of the town that they flooded down there? Had to move everybody out of it. There was one town they even had to move the cemeteries and everything. They flooded the whole area when they changed The Seaway around.”

“We had a storm that started in Montreal. North met South weather conditions at The St. Lawrence Seaway. It really looked like a war zone. I totally think it was The St. Lawrence Seaway that did that. So that was the big ice storm of ’98.”

“After The Seaway opened, it wasn’t too long that the elevator in Kingston shut down. They weren’t drawing. See the big boat, the big upper lakers, used to draw grain into the elevator. Well then the smaller boats would take it on down, eh, before The Seaway opened. Well, once The Seaway opened they didn’t need to stop. They took and went right through to Montreal or Quebec or right on out.”

2.
“I didn’t become a seaway pilot. I piloted the island boats in The Thousand Islands, and a tug and other stuff.”

“Before the seaway system, there was locks right there at Cardinal. Like where the boats had to come through.”