The Gananoque River is a

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

Leeds and Grenville United Counties The United Counties of Leeds and Grenville, commonly known as Leeds and Grenville, is a county in Ontario, Canada, in the Eastern Ontario subregion of Southern Ontario. It fronts on the Saint Lawrence River and the international boundary between ...

Eastern Ontario Eastern Ontario (census population 1,763,186 in 2016) (french: Est de l'Ontario) is a secondary region of Southern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario which lies in a wedge-shaped area between the Ottawa River and St. Lawrence River. It sh ...

, Canada. Shows the course of the river highlighted on a map. The river is in the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...

and is a left tributary of the

Saint Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (french: Fleuve Saint-Laurent, ) is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. Its headwaters begin flowing from Lake Ontario in a (roughly) northeasterly direction, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, connectin ...

. The name "Gananoque" has been spelled many different ways over the years and so has been assigned several different interpretations, including "place of health" or "meeting place". The ''Gananoque River Waterways Association'' was founded in 1963 to include "...property owners, resort operators, fishermen, farmers, trappers and all other interested parties..." for the purpose of getting together to "Protect wild life, arrange for equitable water levels, facilitate navigation, maintain health standards through the purity of the water ndconfer with officials in regard to definite arrangements for maintaining and improving the waterway for everyone's use."

Course and watershed

The Gananoque River begins at Gananoque Lake in incorporated

Leeds and the Thousand Islands Leeds and the Thousand Islands is a township in the Canadian province of Ontario, located within the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville. The township is located along the Saint Lawrence River, and extends north into rural hamlets and villages ...

township. It flows south, passes through the community of Marble Rock, then turns southwest and reaches the community of Maple Grove. It heads again south, takes in the right tributary Mud Creek, passes under

Ontario Highway 401 King's Highway 401, commonly referred to as Highway 401 and also known by its official name as the Macdonald–Cartier Freeway or colloquially referred to as the four-oh-one, is a Controlled-access highway, controlled-access 400-series high ...

, and enters the town of Gananoque. It then flows over the concrete dam for the Gananoque Generating Station, in service since 1939, and empties into the Saint Lawrence River where that river is part of the

Thousand Islands The Thousand Islands (french: Mille-Îles) constitute a North American archipelago of 1,864 islands that straddles the Canada–US border in the Saint Lawrence River as it emerges from the northeast corner of Lake Ontario. They stretch for abo ...

region. Originally the Gananoque watershed included waters south of the present day Rideau River / Cataraqui River watershed divide near Newboro, Ontario. Water from present day upper Cataraqui watershed lakes such as Birch, Canoe, Buck, Devil, Newboro, Clear, Indian, Benson, Opinicon and Sand flowed through the Jones Falls rapids to the White Fish River. That river flowed into Lower Beverley Lake and from there to the Gananoque River. The original native canoe route from the Ottawa River, via the Rideau River, went to the White Fish River and from there to the St. Lawrence River at Gananoque. This was due to the fact that a direct waterway connection to the Cataraqui River did not exist at that time. This started to change c.1803 when brothers Lemuel and Carey Haskins built a timber dam and sawmill at White Fish Falls, near today's Morton, Ontario. Their dam backed up the water from the White Fish River, overflowing the Cranberry Flood Plain and sending it to the Cataraqui River at the Round Tail (just north of today's Upper Brewers Locks). By 1816 (perhaps as early as 1805-1807), the Haskins built a mill dam at the Round Tail in order to impound their escaping water. This flooded the Cataraqui Flood Plain by about 6 feet, making it navigable by canoe and allowing direct navigation to Kingston. When the

Rideau Canal The Rideau Canal, also known unofficially as the Rideau Waterway, connects Canada's capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, to Lake Ontario and the Saint Lawrence River at Kingston. It is 202 kilometres long. The name ''Rideau'', French for "curtain", ...

was built (1826-1832) Haskins' mill dam at White Fish Falls was replaced by a canal dam and weir (at the foot of today's Morton Bay), and the dam at Round Tail replaced by a canal dam at Upper Brewers. The Rideau Canal dam at the foot of Morton Bay now diverts most of the flow to the Cataraqui River. Today's slow flowing Morton Creek (partially flooded due to the dam at Lyndhurst, Ontario) is all that is left of the original White Fish River. Gananoque River

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External links

{{Commons category
Gananoque River Waterways Association
Rivers of Leeds and Grenville United Counties

Course and watershed

See also

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External links