The Trent-Severn Waterway is a Canadian canal system formerly used for commercial purposes but now exclusively for pleasure boats, connecting Lake Ontario at Trenton to the Georgian Bay portion of Lake Huron at Port Severn. Its major natural waterways include the Trent River, Otonabee River, the Kawartha lakes, Lake Simcoe, Lake Couchiching and the Severn River. It traverses Southern Ontario's "cottage country" with recreational properties being the primary industry along the waterway.

It is open for navigation from May until October. The total length of the waterway is 386 kilometres (240 mi), beginning at Trenton, Ontario, with roughly 32 kilometres (20 mi) of man-made channels. There are 44 locks, including 36 conventional locks, two sets of flight locks, hydraulic lift locks at Peterborough and Kirkfield, and a marine railway at Big Chute which transports boats between the upper and lower sections of the Severn.

The system also includes 39 swing bridges and 160 dams and control structures that manage the water levels for flood control and navigation on lakes and rivers that drain approximately 18,600 square kilometres (7,182 sq mi) of central Ontario's cottage country region, across four counties and three single-tier cities, an area that is home to more than a million Canadians. It reaches its highest point of 256.3 metres (840 ft 11 in) at Balsam Lake, the highest point to which a vessel can be navigated from sea level in the Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence River drainage basin. The navigable summit of the Monongahela River (part of the Mississippi River drainage basin) at Fairmont, West Virginia is, at 263 metres (862 ft 10 in), the highest point in North America, and the summit of the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal at its highest point of 406 metres (1,332 ft 0 in) is higher still.

Similar to 0 things you like: