Lake Saint Clair

A river runs through it. It is a fact—and visible from its satellite image if you look closely. The Saint Clair river itself originates in, and drains, Lake Huron. After passing through the lake, it becomes the Detroit river and in due time it feeds Lake Erie to the south. In the lake itself, the river almost, but not quite, marks the border between the United States and Canada. The border parallels it but slightly to the East. Where the river is more bounded by land to the north and south, it is the border.

An excursion yesterday to the very tip of the Grosse Pointe Farms Pier Park had us watching huge freighters slowly, very slowly, come toward us, getting both much larger and travelling much faster. The ships use the river itself; its channel is at least 21 feet in depth; the rest of the lake, at its deepest, is around 17 feet: from the water it represents an invisible highway, but the ships’ masters follow navigational maps showing plenty of detail. The width is about 800 feet, so that the freighters can pass each other—even in the fog; but for safety then they sound their mournful horns at intervals. The lake, at its widest, is about 27 miles across.

The Iroquois called the Lake Otseketa, which (according to Susan Stevens on Facebook) meant sugar or candy; my informant also offers an alternate name, Ganatchio, meaning kettle, based on its shape. From a very high satellite view, the lake more resembles a right fist with the index finger pointing north.

The European discoverer of the lake was René Robert Cavelier.  The date was August 12, 1679. Present with the party was Father Louis Hennepin, O.F.M—who noted that that day happened to be the feast day of Saint Clare of Assisi, another and most famous Franciscan. Presumably he did the naming—and also recorded (he was the expedition’s official historian) what the Iroquois called it. Our family has a kind of linkage with Father Hennepin—a man who got about. He was one of the discoverers of Niagara Falls, Lake Saint Clair, and Saint Anthony Falls now in Minneapolis. I worked for a while in Niagara Falls, we lived in Hennepin County in Minnesota, and yesterday we watched the freighters plow the sky-blue waters on Lac Sainte-Claire.

Concerning the spelling here. Saint Clare was born Chiara Offreduccio. Clare is sometimes spelled Clair or Claire. The tailing E of the original name bestowed by Hennepin got chopped, perhaps by accident, in an official mapping of the region that took place in 1755. But both Grosse and Pointe, in our town, Grosse Pointe Farms, managed to hold on to theirs. You lose some, you gain some.
---------------
Image from Google Maps but rendered non-interactively as a picture. Click to enlarge, Esc to return.