A River Life: Coming of Age in the Thousand Islands

Nestled in a sixty-mile stretch of the St. Lawrence River between Northern New York and Southeast Ontario is an area that has been known to the native people for many thousands of years as Manitoana, or Garden of the Great Spirit.

Later, it became known to the French explorers as Les Mille Isles, and today, it is simply called the Thousand Islands.

It is here, more than anywhere else along its 1200-mile journey to the sea, where the St. Lawrence reaches its pinnacle of achievement. It is wide...