MORRISBURG, Ont. – A variety of St. Lawrence Seaway pictures, dating back as far of the 1800s, are now available online.

Two Morrisburg men have added a pictorial history of the St. Lawrence Seaway on their website stlawrencepiks.com. Morrisburg is across the river from Waddington.

John Gleed recently added the photos which he says covers the period from the first efforts to improve river navigation in the early 1800s to the present day, from Montreal to Lake Ontario.

The photographs and narrative are provided by Ron Beaupre who now lives on the shores of the seaway in Mariatown, near Morrisburg. He grew up in the 1950s in Iroquois where he acquired his life-long interest in the seaway, its boats and history.

Over the years, he has collected a unique library of Seaway related photographs and other documents. He has made a selection of some of his favorite photographs and related information available for the presentation.

It includes more than two hundred historic photographs and descriptions. The St. Lawrence River system, in conjunction with the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, provides a continuous waterway extending 2,347 miles into the heart of the continent from the Atlantic Ocean. Between Montreal and Lake Ontario, a distance of 183 miles, the St. Lawrence River falls a total of 246 feet.

John Gleed originally introduced the stlawrencepiks.com web site in 2010, after moving to retire in Morrisburg following a high-tech career in Ottawa.

The site displays digital photographs taken by himself and his wife, Rosemary Laurin, mostly from along the St. Lawrence River in the beautiful areas around Morrisburg.

In 2011, a Morrisburg Pictorial History section was added to the web site - based on the Reverend George Smith's historic photographs of the old town of Morrisburg, prior to being flooded by the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1958. They were presented with the generous permission of his daughter, Claire Delage, the current owner of all copyrights. For more information contact John at john.gleed@gmail.com or 613 543 0933.