Discover the maritime industry
Did you know that 90% of the goods you use every day are brought to you by ship? From your toothbrush to your iPad! Step aboard the Brought to You by Ship portal and follow the St. Lawrence – Great Lakes Trade Corridor.
Goods arrive by ship
90% of the goods you use every day are brought to you by ship — from your toothbrush to your iPad.
When blue is green
Shipping is the greenest mode of transport currently in existence.
One great corridor
The St. Lawrence – Great Lakes Trade Corridor spans more than 3700 km.
When blue is green!
Shipping is the greenest mode of transport currently in existence. A single medium-sized vessel can transport the same amount of goods as many trucks on the road, making the maritime industry a central part of how goods reach us.
Through the Brought to You by Ship portal, learners explore the Québec maritime industry, the types of cargo travelling on the St. Lawrence River, and port statistics along the trade corridor.
Most of the objects in daily life travel vast distances before reaching a classroom or a kitchen table, and the maritime industry is the quiet system connecting them. The Brought to You by Ship portal invites learners to trace that route along the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes trade corridor, meeting science content where shipping, ecology, and commerce intersect. Rather than presenting facts in isolation, the portal turns an ordinary journey into a sequence of observations students can follow step by step.
Exploring the portal reveals how shipping relates to environmental questions, including the idea that what moves by water can sometimes be the greener option compared with other transport choices. Students can investigate how goods are loaded, carried, unloaded, and delivered, then reason about the consequences of those decisions for ports, coastal communities, and watersheds. Such a setting lets a teacher introduce systems thinking in a concrete, tangible context: a single container arriving at a dock represents a long chain of engineering, planning, and human cooperation.
Game for Science is built as a free multiplayer virtual world devoted entirely to science, and its portals are designed so that young learners can collaborate with peers, teachers, and expert guides while navigating shared spaces. Within that wider environment, each portal offers games, exhibits, and themed activities that suit both primary and secondary levels, in English and in French. Because everything happens in a shared virtual setting, students can compare discoveries, exchange explanations, and build knowledge together rather than working alone beside a worksheet.
The Québec maritime industry includes
- Shipping along the St. Lawrence – Great Lakes Trade Corridor
- Cargo types travelling on the St. Lawrence River
- Port statistics and port activity along the corridor
Further reading and classroom resources are available through our partners, including the St. Lawrence River site and Creo.ca.
The St. Lawrence – Great Lakes Trade Corridor
Spanning more than 3700 km, this corridor links the Great Lakes with the Atlantic. In the Brought to You by Ship game quest, you take on the work of the industry itself, making the decisions that keep the route moving.
What you manage in the quest
- Logistics — planning the flow of goods along the corridor
- Cargo — choosing and handling what travels on board
- Fuel — balancing consumption on the long route
- Crews — keeping the vessel and its people working
More from the virtual world
Game for Science is a free multiplayer virtual world devoted to science, technology and free educational games online, available in English and Français.