A dry canal

At Coteau-du-Lac, on the point of land at the confluence of the Delisle and St. Lawrence rivers, water originally surrounded the site, and boats from Montréal entered the canal at its lower end to bypass the rapids, passed through the locks, and continued upstream toward the Great Lakes. After the construction of hydroelectric dams and the St. Lawrence Seaway, the level of the St. Lawrence dropped by 2.5 m, so water no longer surrounds the point or enters the canal, and the basin at the canal entrance now looks very different from its appearance in the early 19th century. A 1788 painting by Captain Henry Rudyerd, a royal engineer in the British army, shows the lower entrance to the canal and several of the buildings then on the site.

Quebec · Canada