Lost Villages - Mille Roches

[Manfred M]

Shot of the St Lawrence River - the foreground and right hand side of the image are in Canada. The islands in the background are the USA.

This area of Canada is known as the "Lost Villages". A number of villages iin Canada were flooded during the construction of the St Lawrence Seaway in 1958. This was the town site of Mille Roches, which is now under water. In my past, scuba diving days, I had explored this area underwater, especially the old generating station that is now under water.

[C J Southern]

In practice, does anybody ever just "jump in and swim between the countries"? I'm just curious as to whether that would be a "take your life into your own hands" thing or "total non-event" or "something inbetween".

Exploring something the size of a power station underwater must have been exciting. Our "equivalent" in these parts is the sunken cruise ship Mikhail Lermontov; that was quite the experience to go diving on (back in the days before my obviously defective wetsuit shrunk so badly!).

[Manfred M]

I don't think that the US government (or Canadian government) would take very kindly to entering the country illegally without going through border controls.

Only the foundations remain at these sites, the actual machinery and structures were removed prior to the flooding. I do remember diving through the turbine discharge tubes, which had an "elbow" shape in them. Being a river, this was swift water diving, with current to deal with, which was quite fast in places.

[C J Southern]

For sure. Many decades ago I was the diving medic for a 2 diver team that had to do an inspection on the inlet of the Cobb River power station which has a hydraulic head of approximately 596 meters (1,955 feet), the highest of any hydroelectric power station in New Zealand. Thankfully they shut the station down first.

One of the divers said that the eels were huge ... glad it was him going down there and not me.

I understand the territory thing completely, but it's something that always just seemed a bit "funny" where someone from each shore couldn't even swim out to the middle and give each other a high five without one of them committing an offence punishable by arrest and detention.