The eight mandatory Canadian Port Authorities dealt with some 43% of the cargo, but only 24% of vessel movements.
On the west coast, Vancouver, Canada's largest port, with its neighbouring CPA Fraser River was responsible for 21% of the cargo and 12% of shipping movements.
In eastern Canada the six busiest St. Lawrence River ports (including Quebec and Montreal) had 25% of the cargo and 9% of the shipping movements. Fifteen Great Lakes ports had 15% of the cargo and 14% of the movements.
The Great Lakes are connected to the Atlantic ocean through the St. Lawrence Seaway which opened in 1954. In 1995 a total of 3,868 vessel transits carrying 48 million tonnes of cargo passed through this system.
On the Great Lakes the two Canadian ports handling the largest volume of cargo are Hamilton on Lake Ontario and Thunder Bay on Lake Superior, each of which moves about 12 million tonnes annually. The small ports of Kingston and Gananoque at the eastern end of Lake Ontario have the largest number of vessel movements, essentially lake cruising and ferry traffic. Another Lake Ontario port, Toronto, with just over 1 million tonnes and 344 movements, is only a minor participant in the system.
Over the past 20 to 30 years port authorities have not played the same leading role in waterfront development that Japanese port management bodies have had. Instead governments have tended to assign such responsibilities to special purpose development corporations.
Notable examples include Halifax (the Halifax-Dartmouth Waterfront Development Corporation), Saint John (Market Square Development Corporation), Quebec City (la Socie'te' du Vieux Port de Quebec), Montreal (la Socie'te' du Vieux Port de Montreal), Toronto (Harbourfront Corporation) and Vancouver (Granville Island Trust).
In two cases (Montreal Expo '67 and Vancouver Expo '86) international expositions organized under the auspices of the Bureau of International Expositions provided focus and impetus to waterfront development.
