Soo Locks

Around 150 years ago, the friendly folks of Northern Michigan noticed that their neighbors in Southern Ontario had built a gigantic, iron gate, in order to trap all the water in the St. Mary’s River and keep it on the Canadian side of the border. The Canadians’ plan worked swimmingly, and after a few decades the American side of the river had sunk so low that the Yoopers (Upper Peninsula natives) were all forced to purchase imported bottled water at exorbitant prices. The northern Michiganders desperately needed to find a solution to their water shortage woes.

The solution came from the most unexpected of places. One day, a boy named Soo was playing with his rubber ducky while taking a bath. Baths were a rare luxury in those days of drought in the Upper Peninsula, so Soo stayed in the bathtub for a couple of hours. Near the end of his long bath, he realized that the water level in the bathtub had receded to almost nothing.

Now Soo was no dummy, and he quickly realized the only possible explanation for the disappearance of his bath water:


The rubber ducky must have drunk it!

This epiphany got Soo thinking, and before long, he knew just the thing that would solve the Yoopers’ water crisis without making the Canadians too mad at the northern Michiganders. The Americans would throw ducks over the gigantic, iron gate. Once the ducks had drunk all the water on the Canadian side, the Canadians would be forced to open their gate and allow water to flow back to the American side of the St. Mary’s River.

The plan worked. Once the Canadians realized that their surplus of water was gone, they immediately reopened their gigantic, iron gate.

The Americans, however, no longer trusted the Canadians with the St. Mary’s River, so they permanently locked the gate into its opened position.

This is why the gigantic, iron gate is called the “Soo Locks” to this very day.