Sharing Waters: The Challenge of Understanding the Other (Presentation‪)‬

On September 14 and 15, 2006, the Canadian Studies Program at Western Michigan University hosted a symposium on the Great Lakes Environment with the inviting title of "Shared Waters." (1) This event presented an outstanding opportunity to bring to the attention of US scholars the work of many colleagues working on issues related to the St. Lawrence River. To further this discussion, Sylvie Paquerot, now at University of Ottawa, and Vincent Desroches of Western Michigan University invited another set of scholars to propose the articles constituting this dossier, which presents the St. Lawrence River in relation to the Great Lakes environment from a variety of scholarly perspectives and draws on experts from six Quebec universities. Amy Lovecraft, Frederic Lasserre, and Alexandre Brun also contributed in many ways to the preparation of the dossier. We are proud to offer this contribution to the debate. One of the long-standing obstacles for the circulation of knowledge between Quebec, Canada, and United States has been the language barrier. Scholarly work published in English is widely read in Quebec, but articles and books written in French do not usually influence the field in the United States. Articles in this issue are in both languages and we have included abstracts in translation to help the reader identify pertinent information.