Fish or Cut Bait? Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway
“Our relations with Canada, happily always close, involve more and more the unbreakable ties of strategic interdependence. Both nations now need the St. Lawrence Seaway for security as well as for economic reasons. I urge the Congress promptly to approve our participation and construction.” When President Dwight D. Eisenhower included these sentences in his State of the Union Address in January of 1954, there must have been an almost audible sigh of relief from the thousands of Seaway activists, Congressmen, and lobbyists across the country. The previous year had not been an easy one for supporters of the St. Lawrence Seaway project, but now in 1954 they had the guaranteed support of the most powerful and popular man in the nation.