Fireworks on the Riverbanks

Standing on a beflagged platform in a newly mown oat field near Massena, N.Y. one afternoon last week, New York's Governor Thomas E. Dewey pressed a buzzer. Some two miles away in the St. Lawrence River, buried dynamite charges exploded, hurling geysers of water into the air. Fireworks burst overhead, releasing a rain of miniature U.S. flags and Canadian ensigns. At long last construction was started on the huge electric-power project undertaken jointly by the State of New York and the Canadian Province of Ontario. Said Dewey: "The crapehangers may now soak their heads. This is a day of triumph!"

Leaving Massena, U.S. and Canadian officials rode across to a field near Cornwall, Ont. where Canada's Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, Ontario's Premier Leslie Frost and Governor Dewey took silver-plated shovels in hand and broke ground for the project's powerhouse.

When completed in 1959, the project will generate more power than TVA. New York and Ontario will share equally in the cost ($600 million) and in the power (12.6 billion kilowatt-hours a year). The dam will fit into the St. Lawrence Seaway system, scheduled for completion in 1958.

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