The canal opened into Lac-Saint-Louis, then narrowed again at Île Perrot. We were three hundred miles due north of New York City, on the same latitude as Portland, Oregon. Elms and cottonwood bent in the breeze, casting shadowy fingers onto the water. White cedar and ash grew close to the river, where 350,000 cubic feet of water passed by every second. Moraines and drumlins left by glaciers shaped the riverbanks, creating miniature highlands shrouded in red oak and sugar maple. In between, peat bogs lay beneath a lace of fallen trees.
