This post is a part of the Canadian Heritage River series. We continue to welcome proposals about Canadian heritage rivers.

Often described as a ‘nation builder’, the St. Lawrence River has played an integral role in Canadian history.¹ Acting as a natural international border, it stretches nearly 1,200 kilometres and forms part of the Great Lakes basin which cumulatively holds about 20% of the Earth’s surface freshwater.² Yet beyond its geopolitical and economic importance, the St. Lawrence River is a lived space – a place many have called home.

When I came across the call for submissions on Heritage Rivers, my mind immediately went to this mighty river. Growing up in the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence, my life, heritage, and values have been molded by my experiences on the water. To my surprise I found that it was not until the spring of 2026 that the St. Lawrence was nominated for a ‘Heritage River’ designation. However, it was specifically only the ‘Upper St. Lawrence River’ that was deemed as holding heritage worth protecting.³ This section of the river is located at the head of the St. Lawrence, fed by Lake Ontario, it spans from Kingston to Brockville, Ontario—a distance of about 83 kilometers.

Given the river’s importance to the historical development of Canada, as well as contemporary economies and communities, I had simply assumed it would be one of the founding rivers of this Heritage system. I was even more surprised by this decision to assign heritage worthiness to just one section. This discovery led me to ask: how does the importance of a river change from one buoy to another? As the water passes by the easternmost of the Thousand Islands does it suddenly lose its value? From one sandbank to another, are the critters below the water’s surface deemed to be no longer deserving of protection? How do we decide where heritage begins and ends, and how do we apply this static designation to a dynamic subject like a river?

Upon further reflection, I started to wonder if perhaps it is the very magnitude of the St. Lawrence, both in its physical size and cultural relevance for so many aspects of Canadian life, that complicates its inclusion within the Canadian Heritage Rivers System?  How do we define the heritage of a river that spans multiple jurisdictions, ecosystems, communities, and histories?

The complexities related to the St. Lawrence system as a multi-jurisdictional natural resource, economic asset, and cultural space become more apparent when we consider the story of the enigmatic freshwater American Eel. Freshwater eels have unique life cycles that traverse marine, brackish, and freshwater habitats.⁴ Born in the Sargasso Sea, a small section of the Atlantic Ocean near Bermuda,⁵ eels destined for the St. Lawrence travel over 3,000 kilometers to reach the river’s freshwaters.⁶ Here the eels will settle in their new home, continuing to grow until they reach their sexual maturation, eventually returning once more to the salty Sargasso to spawn.⁷

For much of its life the American eel moves through a landscape divided by human boundaries. As it migrates up and down the St. Lawrence River, it encounters dams, shipping infrastructure, provincial and international borders, and a variety of governance systems. Yet for the eel, this is all one space, the continuity of which is critical for its survival.

The dependency of the eels on the river is not just a one-way relationship. The river ecosystem also relies on the eels, as near shore predators they are integral for balancing the various other fish populations. With the decline of the eel population mainly due to the introduction of several dams and turbines along the St. Lawrence during the mid-20^th century,⁸ this presents an opportunity for an invasive species to fill this niche, potentially destabilizing the entire fish community.⁹ These eels have also been economically significant for the region. Of the commercial eel catch in Canada from 1950-2000, 57% were caught in the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence region.¹⁰

Beyond their economic and ecological importance, eels also hold deep cultural meaning for Indigenous groups all along the St. Lawrence as part of generational food, trade, ceremony, and medicine traditions.¹¹ Proper systematic surveys of eels in this area did not start until the late 1970s.¹² The introduction of these surveys was in part a response to noticeable declines in the eel populations due to water control infrastructure related to the St. Lawrence Seaway, built in the mid-1950s.¹³ This means that much of what we know about the historical territories, behaviours, and migration patterns of eels comes from the traditional knowledge of First Nations like the Mi’kmaq.¹⁴

Like the many ways in which communities relate to the river, the American eel also carries a multitude of meanings. Conversations about either bring together Indigenous nations, environmentalists, hydroelectric operators, commercial fishers, shipping interests, and governments, often with competing priorities.¹⁵ The life of the American eel highlights how ecological systems rarely align neatly with our human-constructed boundaries. In many ways, the eel’s story is also the story of the St. Lawrence. Attempting to reduce either to fixed heritage boundaries quickly becomes as slippery to grasp as the eels themselves.

Flowing across provinces, states, and Indigenous territories, the many lives that the river leads across eastern Canada complicates any attempt to tell a single, unified story of the St. Lawrence. What the river means for me as an Ontario resident with settler ancestry differs from what it means for an Akwesasne woman, or Québécois fisherman. However, on their own none of these narratives can fully explain the river. Only when held together, do these stories reveal the interwoven histories of the St. Lawrence and the nation that grew along its shores. The river exists as a shared point of connection between English and French Canada, First Nations and settlers, economy and the environment – even if we know it by different names. As a site of both conflict and connection, it is a physical embodiment of the ever-flowing relationships that shape Canada’s past, present, and future.

The Canadian Heritage Rivers System aims to recognize and protect rivers of outstanding natural and cultural value.¹⁶ Yet, once we start drawing boundaries between chapters of a river’s story, certain communities’ connections are centered, while others are forgotten or ignored. Perhaps this is how the St. Lawrence complicates our understanding of ‘heritage’. Rivers do not begin and end where we say they do; the water continues to flow, and so do the relationships that connect communities across time and space. If heritage is meant to reflect our relationships with place, then the task should be not to divide the St. Lawrence into stories to make it easier to protect, rather to find ways of acknowledging the connections that have always existed along this mighty river.

1. Daniel Macfarlane, Negotiating a River: Canada, the US and the Creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway (UBC Press, 2014). ↩︎
2. Maureen Campbell et al., ‘The Economy as a Driver of Change in the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River Basin’, Journal of Great Lakes Research, The Great Lakes Futures Project: Using Scenario Analysis to Develop a Sustainable Socio-ecologic Vision for the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin, vol. 41 (January 2015): 41, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jglr.2014.11.016. ↩︎
3. Parks Canada, ‘Governments of Canada and Ontario Accept the Nomination of the Upper St. Lawrence River in Ontario as a Canadian Heritage River’, Government of Canada, 13 May 2026, https://www.canada.ca/en/parks-canada/news/2026/05/governments-of-canada-and-ontario-accept-the-nomination-of-the-upper-st-lawrence-river-in-ontario-as-a-canadian-heritage-river.html. ↩︎
4. John M. Casselman and Marc Gaden, New Research Explains Relationship Between Commercial Price, Amount of Harvest, and Alarming Decline in American Eel (Great Lakes Fishery Commision, 2008), 1, https://www.glfc.org/pubs/pressrel/casselman.pdf. ↩︎
5. Jill DeVito, ‘No Simple Swim: The Mysterious Migration of the American Eel (Anguilla Rostrata)’, Connecticut River Conservancy, 7 January 2026, https://www.ctriver.org/post/american-eel-migration. ↩︎
6. ‘Raise Your Voice and Get the American Eel Listed by SARA’, Canadian Wildlife Federation, 6 June 2019, https://blog.cwf-fcf.org/index.php/en/raise-your-voice-and-get-the-american-eel-listed-by-sara/. ↩︎
7. Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels (Albert Bonniers Förlag; Harper Collins, 2019), 130. ↩︎
8. Rob MacGregor et al., Declines of American Eel in North America: Complexities Associated with Bi-National Management, American Fisheries Society Symposium, 2008, 21,22, https://www.glfc.org/pubs/clc/aeel2008.pdf. ↩︎
9. MacGregor et al., Declines of American Eel in North America: Complexities Associated with Bi-National Management, 10. ↩︎
10. MacGregor et al., Declines of American Eel in North America: Complexities Associated with Bi-National Management, 4. ↩︎
11. Ibid., 3. ↩︎
12. Heather M. Cox et al., ‘Drowning Voices and Drowning Shoreline: A Riverside View of the Social and Ecological Impacts of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project’, Rural History (United Kingdom) 10, no. 2 (1999): 249. ↩︎
13. Jake La Rose et al., ‘Increasing Levels of Recruitment to the Upper St. Lawrence River/Lake Ontario as Measured at the Moses-Saunders Dam Eel Ladders. At Least One Million Eels Ascending the Ladders Annually’, Great Lakes Fishery Commission, n.d., https://www.glfc.org/indicator.php?indicator=192. ↩︎
14. Mi’kmaq traditional territory is in the Atlantic provinces of Canada, the more coastal areas of the St. Lawrence River. Merrell-Ann S. Phare, ‘Indigenous People and Water: Governing across Borders’, in Water Without Borders? Canada, the United States, and Shared Waters, ed. Emma S. Norman et al. (University of Toronto Press, 2013), 31. ↩︎
15. Sis’moqon, ‘First Nations Wonder If Canada’s Decision on Eels Is Best for Future of Species’, CBC News, 5 December 2025, https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/american-eel-first-nations-9.7004578. ↩︎
16. ‘Designation Process’, accessed 16 April 2026, https://chrs.ca/en/designation-process. ↩︎

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Annabel Cowan

Annabel Cowan is a proud Canadian who comes from a long line of St. Lawrence ‘River Rats’. A sixth-generation member of the St. Lawrence River community, she has been on the water since she was a month old and has been hooked on river life ever since. She completed her B.A in Environment and Health at McGill University in Montreal where she explored the intersections of environmental sustainability, public health, and social equity. Currently completing a Master’s in Environment and Society at the Rachel Carson Centre at LMU Munich, Annabel is a passionate environmentalist with a background in non-profit work and climate communication. She works to promote water health and highlight the importance of our water bodies for the many human and non-human communities that rely on them. Her goal is to ensure that another six generations may continue to live, work, and play along the river, as she has.

Latest posts by Annabel Cowan (see all)

• Drawing Static Boundaries on a Flowing River: Rethinking Heritage on the St. Lawrence - July 8, 2026