Canada Steamship Lines - Beginnings

Beginnings

CSL had humble beginnings in Canada East in 1845, operating river boats on the Saint Lawrence River in general commerce. Subsequent growth over the years was tied to expansion of the canal system on the upper St. Lawrence River (the precursor to the Saint Lawrence Seaway), and to a new Welland Canal connecting to the upper Great Lakes. The year of 1913 saw the merger of CSL with Northern Navigation Company, the Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Company, and the Niagara Navigation Company, which resulted in the acquisition of several passenger vessels, including the vessels Chicora, Carona, Chippewa and Cayuga; built 1864(?), 1896, 1893 and 1907 respectively, with the Cayuga being the last of them to be in service by 1936. She was sold in 1954 and scrapped by 1961. CSL had also acquired the new ships SS Hamonic (1909), Huronic (1901), and the ill-fated Noronic (1913). By 1924, CSL purchased its first self-unloaded bulk carrier, the Collier, and also owned a shipyard in Collingwood, Ontario where CSL and competitor lakers were being built. CSL also came into ownership of one of Canada's largest shipyards, Davie Shipbuilding, in Lauzon, Quebec for a period in the 1960s-1970s and was at one time a major passenger line on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River.

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Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:

    These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.
    Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)

    The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.
    Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)