Canadian icebreaker ready to clear path for Seaway opening

Mar. 18—Some much needed icebreaking between the U.S. and Canada — literally speaking — will begin Thursday when a Canadian Coast Guard vessel leaves port and heads west on the St. Lawrence Seaway.
"We will start the opening of the Montreal to Lake Ontario section in two days with an icebreaker from the Quebec region," Guillaume Paradis, Icebreaking Superintendent for the Canadian Coast Guard's Central Region said Tuesday morning from his base in Montreal.
The ship is the medium icebreaker Pierre Radisson, launched in 1977 and named after Pierre-Esprit Radisson (1636-1710), an explorer in "New France," which was a French colonial territory in North America. It can plow through ice a meter (3.2 feet) thick.
The 322-foot Pierre Raddison, Paradis said, is scheduled to be at St. Lambert Locks in Montreal at 8 a.m. Thursday. "They will head west and break ice in certain areas. There is ice near Cape Vincent."
The icebreaker should be in the Cape Vincent area on Saturday, which is also the day that the St. Lawrence Seaway is scheduled to open for the season.
Despite abundant ice coverage on the St. Lawrence River that hasn't been seen in years, Paradis expects that the Pierre Raddison will be able to break through it all. Ice is most heavy east of Massena, especially at Lake Saint Francis, which is fully covered, Paradis said. The lake is just east of the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation.
But in general, Paradis said, "With the warmer temperatures between Cape Vincent and Montreal, they should be all right."
Cape Vincent is where Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River meet. It's very rare for Lake Ontario to freeze over because of its depth. Paradis said his main concern involving ice coverage and thickness is near the Welland Canal. The canal, an important link in the Seaway, provides navigation for large vessels between Lake Erie to the south and Lake Ontario to the north.
"We have a Coast Guard ship that will do reconnaissance later this week, so we will have a good idea of the ice condition there," Paradis said. An option is to send a bigger icebreaker to deal with that ice if needed.
Icebreaking on the St. Lawrence River and some of the Great Lakes is part of Operation Coal Shovel, a seasonal icebreaking effort between the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards as the nations' icebreakers work together. Operation Taconite, another Coast Guard icebreaking operation, takes place in the northern Great Lakes.
"We try to work as one Coast Guard, and it's working very well," Paradis said.

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