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The St. Lawrence has 'long been an important trade route, especially since the St. Lawrence Seaway was built in 1954-9, enabling ocean-going vessels up to about 28 000 tonnes to sail into the great lakes. The major rivers in the west are the Fraser and Thompson, which run into the Pacific but are of limited navigational value. Most other rivers flow to virtually uninhabited coasts of the Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean, and are frozen for much of the year.

Traveling the lakes and rivers

Nevertheless, the huge network of rivers and lakes played an important role in opening up the country to the first explorers, trappers and fur traders. They were able, with only short hauls overland, to paddle their canoes from the St. Lawrence River westward to central Alberta, north to the Mackenzie delta, and back again.

The first European settlers were the French. In 1605 they founded a community that is now Annapolis Royal on the coast of Nova Scotia and in 1608 they sailed up the St. Lawrence to the site that is now the city of Quebec. British settlement started two years later on Newfoundland. By the 1670s French explorers, missionaries, traders and trappers had penetrated west to the Mississippi headwaters and Manitoba. The British set up the Hudson's Bay Company to trade in pelts and furs, and the scene was set for rivalry between the two powers.

Next: Battles of early settlers