Loading waterway map…
The Trent‑Severn Waterway runs about 386 kilometres — roughly 208 nautical miles — from Trenton on the Bay of Quinte to Port Severn on Georgian Bay. This map plots every one of the 44 lockstations, 15 swing and fixed bridges, 54 marinas and 60 anchorages we cover, plus the 13 Environment Canada gauges along the corridor. Turn layers on and off with the buttons above the map; every marker opens to a full page.
The lock and bridge markers are live. Their colour comes from the Parks Canada lockstation status feed, which we re‑read every ten minutes — green for operable, red for shutdown. A red marker in mid‑season usually means a mechanical problem, not a seasonal closure.
Distances on the waterway are measured in kilometres from Trenton, and that is the figure shown against each place in the list. Lockstations are numbered 1 through 45, but there are only 44 of them: there is no Lock 29. The sequence simply skips the number. If a guide or a chartplotter sends you looking for Lock 29 in the Kawarthas, that is why you won’t find it — the station you want is Lovesick, Lock 30.
The waterway is not a single downhill run. It climbs from Trenton to a summit in the Kawarthas and then descends again to Georgian Bay, which is why our anchorage pages talk about the lock above and the lock below rather than north and south. The Kirkfield Lift Lock sits at the height of land; beyond it you are going down. Two of the lift locks on this map — Peterborough and Kirkfield — are hydraulic, and Big Chute at the Georgian Bay end is not a lock at all but a marine railway that carries your boat overland in a sling.
For the swing bridges, the number that matters is the closed clearance — what you have if the bridge does not open for you. Those figures on this site come from the Canadian Hydrographic Service Sailing Directions (CEN309) where CEN309 covers the crossing. Two bridges are not covered there and are shown as unpublished rather than guessed at. Clearances also move with water level, so treat every one of them as a planning figure and not a guarantee.
The orange gauge markers are Environment and Climate Change Canada hydrometric stations. Each one reads against its own local benchmark, not against chart datum, so the absolute number tells you nothing about how much water is under your keel. What is useful is the deviation — how far the gauge sits from its own typical level for this month. A station running 15 cm low means charted depths in that pool are running roughly 15 cm shallower than a normal day. Full readings and 30‑day charts are on the Water Levels page.
The blue line follows the dredged canal cuts, the marked fairway and the rivers the route runs down — the Trent, the Otonabee, the Severn and the Talbot — as mapped in OpenStreetMap, much of it originally from Natural Resources Canada’s CanVec data.
It breaks in three places, and that is not an error. Crossing Rice Lake between Hastings and Peterborough, running Pigeon and Sturgeon between Bobcaygeon and Lindsay, and crossing Lake Simcoe and Couchiching between Gamebridge and the Narrows, there is no dredged channel to draw. On those stretches you are navigating open water from buoy to buoy, and the correct line is the one you take off the chart in the conditions of the day — not one we could draw for you here. Everywhere the line does appear, it is there for orientation only.
This is a reference map, not a navigation chart. Do not use the line or the markers to plan a track. Navigate from current CHS charts and Notices to Mariners, and confirm lock and bridge operations with Parks Canada before you rely on them. Positions here are accurate enough to find a place; they are not surveyed.
The waterway is not open year‑round. Parks Canada sets the navigation season each year, and lock hours taper before it closes, so a late‑season transit needs the current schedule rather than last year’s. Check the Captain’s Log for the current day’s conditions and any active hazards.