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The Saint Lawrence River is born at the outflow of Lake Ontario at Kingston, Ontario. From there, it passes Brockville, CornwallCornwall ( 2001 population 45,640, metropolitan population 57,581) is a city in southeastern Ontario, Canada, located on the St. Lawrence River near the Quebec border. It is approximately 100 kilometres from Ottawa, Canada's capital, and Montreal, Quebec', MontrealMontreal (/mVn. tri"Al/ in English, /mO~. re"al/ in French) is the largest city in the province of Quebec, Canada, where it also constitutes an administrative region. It is Canada's second most populous city after Toronto ( Statistics Canada), and the sec, Trois-RivièresTrois-Rivieres ( 2001 population 46,264; metropolitan population 137,507) is a city on the St. Lawrence River at the mouth of the Saint-Maurice River in central Quebec, Canada. Its inhabitants are known as "Trifluviens" (Trifluvians). It was known to earl, and Quebec City before draining into the Gulf of Saint LawrenceThe Gulf of Saint Lawrence the world's largest estuary, is the outlet of North America's Great Lakes via the Saint Lawrence River into the Atlantic Ocean. The river flows into the gulf through the Jacques Cartier Strait between the Cote-Nord region of Que, the largest estuaryAn estuary is a semi-enclosed coastal body of water which has a free connection with the open sea and within which sea water mixes with fresh water. The key feature of an estuary is that it is an interface between sea water and fresh water and there is an in the world. It runs 1900 miles (3058 kilometers) from source to mouth (744 miles / 1,197 km from the outflow of Lake Ontario), and together with the Great Lakes which it drains, and their tributaries, forms the world's largest fresh-water system.

The river includes Lac Saint-LouisLac Saint-Louis is a lake in extreme southwestern Quebec, Canada, adjoining the Island of Montreal at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. One can actually see a line in the middle of the lake where the two different-coloured waters mee south of Montreal, Lac Saint-FrançoisLac Saint-Francois (Lake Saint Francis) is a lake which borders southeastern Ontario, southwestern Quebec and northern New York State. It is located on the Saint Lawrence River between Lake Ontario and Montreal. The lake forms part of the Saint Lawrence S at Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec and Lac Saint-Pierre east of Montreal. It surrounds such islands as the Thousand Islands near Kingston, the Island of Montreal, Île Jésus ( Laval), Île d'Orléans near Quebec City, and Anticosti Island north of the Gaspé.

The first European to navigate the St. Lawrence was Jacques Cartier, who on 9 June 1534 first sighted the river and also claimed New France for Francis I. Until the early 1600s, the French used the name Rivière du Canada to designate the Saint Lawrence upstream to Montreal and the Ottawa River after Montreal. The Saint Lawrence River served as the main route for exploration of the North American interior from Europe.

The St. Lawrence was formerly continuously navigable only as far as Montreal due to the Lachine Rapids. The Lachine Canal was the first to allow ships to pass the rapids; the Saint Lawrence Seaway, an extensive system of canals and locks, now permits ocean-going vessels to pass all the way to Lake Superior.

A note on translation: Occasionally, the French name fleuve Saint-Laurent is wrongly translated as Saint Lawrence Seaway, on the idea that it uses the word fleuve, not rivière. However, the word fleuve simply means a river that runs to the sea, and is appropriately translated by river. The seaway is a system of artificial canals, and is called in French voie maritime du Saint-Laurent.