Regions
Sarnia/St.Clair River
The 60-kilometer (36 mile) St. Clair River is one of the most unique and scenic drives found around the Great Lakes. It's called the St. Clair Parkway. This slow speed road twists and turns while nestled up to water, which flows south to Lakes Erie, Ontario and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence River.
Almost half of the total drive features an open waterfront where travelers can have an unobstructed view of one of the world’s busiest waterways. The waterway in fact is busier than the Panama and Suez Canals combined, witnessing more than 5,000 ships pass annually.
Just imagine, that it wasn’t long ago when a St. Clair River didn’t exist. Much of this area, including Lake Huron, was covered in a glacier sheet 6-8,000 years ago. As it melted, streams made their way south, gradually eroding the land and carving out a large river, forming Lake St. Clair and eventually draining into Lake Erie. At times, previous incarnations of Lake Huron drained west through the middle of what is now the State of Michigan to Lake Michigan, and down the Mississippi.
The water has helped create a unique international relationship within Lambton County and its neighbours in Michigan. It’s here you can explore three separate locations for international crossings. The Blue Water Bridge joins Point Edward with Port Huron, Michigan. Two locations - Sombra, Ontario-Marine City, Michigan and Walpole Island- Algonac Michigan, offer year round car/pedestrian ferries from early morning to late evening.
It is also unique in having two Indian communities, or First Nation communities as they’re called in Canada. Walpole Island, an unceded territory provides one of the most important wetland systems in the Great Lakes. The Amjinaang community is within the City of Sarnia’s borders. Both communities are from Chippewa nation, part of the “Three Fires Confederacy” of the Adawa, Pottawatami and Chippewa. Canada’s Capital is named after the first Nation, the Adawa, now spelled Ottawa.
Hamlets along the river have an interesting history as well. Just as Detroit (or “the straights in French) was founded by a French explorer Marquis de Cadillac (now a name known for the famous automobile) much of the parkway’s early European population was French, although the explorers worked for Spain.
Sombra, with its large trees, is Spanish for “shady place.” This hamlet is filled with turn-of-the-century homes that have been converted into boutiques. Corunna is Spanish for Crown, and was once considered a possible site for Canada’s capital. It was deemed too close to its neighbours physically, and a dowdy town nicknamed “mudtown” was eventually picked. Ottawa, no one would say today, is dowdy.
Just south on the parkway in the village of Dresden, features the actual home of Josiah Henson. You’ll remember him as the central character in the famous novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that chronicled the perilous journey to freedom by African Americans along the “underground railroad”
Community museums can be found in Mooretown and Sombra. Both tell the story of the local agricultural living, marine tales and highlight interesting past and present residents. One, Space Shuttle Colonel Christopher Hadfield, flew missions in 1995 and 2001; the latter which included a space walk to install the Canadarm unit.
The St. Clair Parks Commission operates two campgrounds, a marina, a golf course, and Uncle Tom's Cabin along here. Proceeds from its operations help maintain 17 free public waterfront parks along the corridor.
Sarnia
Sitting amidst one of the busiest recreational boating and shipping regions of the Great Lakes, Sarnia hugs the meandering St. Clair River, and the shores of world's longest freshwater shoreline - Lake Huron. Here the landmark twin Blue Water Bridges join Ontario with Port Huron, Michigan, just an hour north of Detroit, along the Chicago to Toronto corridor. Highway 402 travels east from here. Moving west, the I-94 flows south to Detroit, while the I-69 heads west to Flint, Michigan, and Chicago.
Early in the 1830s, the first French European settlers arrived, after thousands of years of native settlement here, and named the community "Les Rapids" or "The Rapids" for the fast flowing water leaving Lake Huron. It was soon renamed Port Sarnia and today features more than 70,000 residents and about 20 kilometres (12 miles) of waterfront.
Sarnia marks the northern starting point of one of three parkway systems in the province of Ontario, the St. Clair Parks system. The other parkways are in Niagara and along the St. Lawrence River.
South of Sarnia is one of the continent's vast petrochemical complexes, where the building blocks for many of our day to day products are developed. From oil, items such as lipstick and nylons are manufactured. Fuel for your car, home and barbecue come from here. So do plastic and vinyl products or Styrofoam to keep food hot and insulate buildings. In the past decade discharges from these petrochemical plants have been virtually eliminated, making the St. Clair River cleaner every year. That improvement means the river is expected to be removed in the near future from a list of Great Lakes water bodies experiencing environmental problems. A new City of Sarnia waste treatment plant, completed in 2001, was the latest major improvement to river's health.
Sarnia's tourism industry has grown rapidly since the mid-1990s. It has added a new $16 million sports and entertainment centre, the new Imperial Oil Centre for the Performing Arts, a new public art gallery, and expanded Hiawatha Racetrack with 450 new slot machines. The city has also spent millions on improving its waterfront parks, making them the envy of communities throughout the U.S. and Canada.
The Sarnia Bay district features Centennial Park, home to the two-month Celebration of Lights festival and a variety of festivals in the summer months. The Sarnia Highland Games, includes the North American Haggis Hurling Championship, and has been held for two decades. The Dow People Place outdoor entertainment stage, features regular summer entertainment. Beside Sarnia Bay Marina is a 100-foot wide scale model of the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater system in the world.
Annually more than 5,000 freighters pass by Sarnia, and all winter, workers repair the ships for their coming season. Visitors can drive or walk right up to many of the ships.
The ample outdoor park settings create an ideal environment for waterfront dining, overlooking the busy activity that creates interest year round.
Three cruise boats run regular excursions from Sarnia, Point Edward, and from Port Huron, Michigan, taking people up and down the St. Clair River and out onto Lake Huron.
The Sarnia Salmon Derby is one of the oldest and largest fishing derbies in Ontario, and is held annually beginning at the end of April.
The area enjoys a moderate climate, rarely receiving significant snowfalls, but just enough to put glimmer on the ground for the lights festival.
Point Edward:
When you cross over the Blue Water Bridge into Canada, you are actually arriving in a small, incorporated village, called Point Edward. With about 2,500 residents this warm community was named after Prince Edward, father of Queen Victoria of England.
It was founded in 1878 and ever since has proudly maintained its independence.
In the past Point Edward was a major Grand Trunk Railway Terminal. From 1853 to 1902 railway cars were transported to the United States by a swing ferry. Many of the homes in Point Edward were built and owned by the Railway Company.
For decades wooden Great Lakes cruise boats stopped here, picking up supplies and passengers. While that industry disappeared, it's now reappearing and is expected to boom in the coming years, with new, narrow ships being built, designed to navigate the St. Lawrence Seaway and its locks. It's also home to Bridgeview Yachting Centre, one of the largest full-service marinas on the Great Lakes.
Following the construction of the second span of the Blue Water Bridge in 1999, this village welcomed a huge new attraction, the Point Edward Charity Casino in 2000. This seven day a week operation features 36 gaming tables and 450 slot machines, and is a popular destination for thousands of visitors every day. It features a riverside restaurant, a gift shop and a public walkway along with river.
Changes didn't stop with the casino. The municipality continues to upgrade the Point Edward Waterfront Park, featuring a tiered stone shoreline protection system, a playground, washrooms, and a fish hatchery. It's also part of a waterfront walking/cycling trail system that extends both northeast and south from this location, situated underneath the bridge where Lake Huron empties into the St. Clair River.
That's not all that's new in the Village. 2002 included upgrades to the downtown core and surrounding area, including new street lighting, plus new municipal street signs throughout.
A new world-class Tax and Duty Free Shop also opened at the Blue Water Bridge, replacing the original store. Featuring great prices on Canadian souvenir, cosmetics, beer, liquor and more, the new store also features the Coffee Lodge diner. The store is open 24 hours a day.
South of the Blue Water Bridge - where tourist centres, hotels and marinas now sit, along with the hotels and restaurants at Sarnia's Centennial Park - this land was a marsh at the turn of the century. Much of that area was filled in for development, leaving only canals for ships and pleasure craft.
When the Blue Water Bridge added a second span, careful excavation was done to the land. More than 400,000 Indian artifacts were found, ranging from carved bird stones, to ancient pottery. That excavation also occurred for the new Duty Free Shop, and experts agree the area is one of the best archaeological sites in North America, as it has been a stopping point for transient native bands and traders for centuries, due in part to the great fishing and narrow crossing point beneath the bridge. Each layer of excavated dirt represents a different century of habitation in this region, so the findings tell us much about the local human history, history that might have been lost if the bridge wasn't twinned in 1997.
In length the Blue Water Bridge is 2.4 kilometres of 1.5 miles. That's the equivalent of 9 Detroit Renaissance Centres or 3.6 of Toronto's CN Towers.
Beneath the bridge in the blue waters of the St. Clair River sit about six shipwrecks. Because of the river's fast flow it never freezes. That means some adventurous scuba divers visit sunken ships under the water, year round. Windsurfers too zip across the river beneath the bridge, capturing gale force winds, while oblivious to the chill of winter or heat of summer.
The most famous item beneath the bridge isn't a shipwreck. It's French Fries. No less than 3 trucks sell their famous fries from spring to fall, in one of the village's great traditions.
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