<P> The first proposals for a bi-national comprehensive deep waterway along the Saint Lawrence were made in the 1890s . In the following decades, developers proposed a hydropower project as inseparable from the seaway; the various governments and seaway supporters believed that the deeper water to be created by the hydro project was necessary to make the seaway channels feasible for ocean - going ships . United States proposals for development up to and including the First World War met with little interest from the Canadian federal government . But the two national governments submitted Saint Lawrence plans to a group for study . By the early 1920s, both The Wooten - Bowden Report and the International Joint Commission recommended the project . </P> <P> Although the Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King was reluctant to proceed, in part because of opposition to the project in Quebec, in 1932 he and the United States representative signed a treaty of intent . This treaty was submitted to the United States Senate in November 1932 and hearings continued until a vote was taken on March 14, 1934 . The majority voted in favor of the treaty, but it failed to gain the necessary two - thirds vote for ratification . Subsequent attempts between the governments in the 1930s to forge an agreement came to naught due to opposition by the Ontario government of Mitchell Hepburn, and that of Quebec . In 1936, John C. Beukema, head of the Great Lakes Harbors Association and a member of the Great Lakes Tidewater Commission, was among a delegation of eight from the Great Lakes states to meet at the White House with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to get his support of the Seaway concept . </P> <P> Beukema and Saint Lawrence Seaway proponents were convinced that such a nautical link would lead to development of the communities and economies of the Great Lakes region by enabling ocean - going ships . In this period, grain exports to Europe were highly important to the national economy, along with other commodities . The negotiations on the treaty resumed in 1938 and by January 1940, substantial agreement was reached between Canada and the United States . By 1941, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Mackenzie King made an executive agreement to build the joint hydro and navigation works, but this failed to receive the assent of the U.S. Congress . Proposals for the seaway were met with resistance; primary opposition came from interests representing existing harbors on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and internal waterways, and from the railroads associations . The railroads carried freight and goods between the coastal ports and the Great Lakes cities . </P> <P> After 1945, proposals to introduce tolls to the Seaway were not sufficient to gain support by the U.S. Congress for the project . Growing impatient, and with Ontario desperate for the power to be generated by hydro - electricity, Canada began to consider "going it alone". This seized the imagination of Canadians, engendering a groundswell of Saint Lawrence nationalism . Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent advised U.S. President Harry S. Truman on September 28, 1951 that Canada was unwilling to wait for the United States and would build a seaway alone; the Canadian Parliament authorized the founding of the Saint Lawrence Seaway Authority on December 21 of that year . Fueled by this support, Saint Laurent's administration decided over the course of 1951 and 1952 to construct the waterway alone, combined with the Moses - Saunders Power Dam . (This became the joint responsibility of Ontario and New York: as a hydro - power dam would change the water levels, it required bilateral cooperation .) </P>

How did the great lakes st lawrence seaway influence the development of cities in the region