Which one of the following pairs of City and Lake is not correctly matched?

Correct — B, Detroit : Superior. Detroit does not stand on Lake Superior, and in fact it does not stand on any of the Great Lakes — it stands on the Detroit River, the strait that carries the water of Lake St. Clair down into Lake Erie, with the Canadian city of Windsor facing it across the channel. The name says as much: détroit is French for strait, and the settlement founded there in 1701 as Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit was a post commanding the passage. Lake Superior is the northernmost and largest of the five, and its shore is far away in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Ontario; the big city on it is Duluth at its western tip, with Thunder Bay on the Canadian side. The other three pairs are sound. Buffalo sits at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River that drains it toward Lake Ontario. Milwaukee sits on the western shore of Lake Michigan, the only one of the five lying wholly within the United States. Toronto sits on the north-western shore of Lake Ontario, the lowest and smallest of the chain and the one from which the St. Lawrence flows to the sea.

• (a)Buffalo : Erie — Correctly matched, so not the answer. Buffalo lies at Lake Erie's eastern end where the Niagara River leaves it, which is why the city grew as the western terminus of the Erie Canal.
• (c)Milwaukee : Michigan — Correctly matched. Milwaukee stands on the western shore of Lake Michigan, about 150 kilometres north of Chicago, which is on the same lake.
• (d)Toronto : Ontario — Correctly matched, and doubly easy to remember because the city, the lake and the province share the name. Toronto is on the north-western shore of Lake Ontario.

The Great Lakes are five connected freshwater lakes on the border of the United States and Canada, holding about a fifth of the world's surface fresh water. From west to east and upstream to downstream they run Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario, and the mnemonic HOMES gives all five initials. Water flows from Superior through the St. Marys River into Huron, from Huron through the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River into Erie, from Erie over Niagara Falls into Ontario, and from Ontario down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. Michigan is the only one entirely inside the United States. The chain carried the iron ore, coal and grain that built the American industrial belt, and every large lake city sits at a point where that traffic had to break bulk or change channel.

Pair-matching items on cities and water bodies are decided by one wrong pair, and the reliable method is to place each city on the map rather than to test the pairs against a memory of the list. Detroit is the one that rewards attention, because it is a Great Lakes city that is not on a Great Lake — its water is the connecting strait, not a lake, and its name records the fact. That kind of pairing, where a city sits on the channel between two lakes or on a river just short of the lake, is a favourite of examiners. The others in this set are anchored by simple associations: Buffalo with the Erie Canal and Niagara, Milwaukee and Chicago with Lake Michigan, Toronto with Lake Ontario and the province of the same name. If the question had wanted a city genuinely on Lake Superior, the answer would have been Duluth or Thunder Bay.

• The five Great Lakes, from the head of the system downstream, are Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario; the mnemonic is HOMES.
• Detroit stands on the Detroit River, the channel between Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie, facing Windsor, Ontario.
• Duluth, Minnesota, is the principal United States city on Lake Superior; Thunder Bay is the Canadian one.
• Buffalo lies at the eastern end of Lake Erie at the head of the Niagara River, and was the western terminus of the Erie Canal.
• Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake wholly within the United States; Chicago and Milwaukee are both on it.

• Assuming every large city near the lakes stands on a lake. Detroit stands on a connecting strait.
• Confusing Lake Ontario the water body with Ontario the Canadian province — both touch Toronto, but the pair asked about is the lake.
• Reversing the order of the lakes. Superior is the highest and largest, Ontario the lowest and smallest, and the water runs from the first to the last.

As a not-correctly-matched pair item on cities and lakes, rivers or ports, where one pairing has been shifted to a neighbouring feature.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following cities stands on the shore of Lake Superior?

  • (a)Detroit
  • (b)Duluth
  • (c)Cleveland
  • (d)Toronto

  Answer(b) Duluth — at the western tip of Lake Superior in Minnesota. Detroit is on the Detroit River, Cleveland on Lake Erie and Toronto on Lake Ontario.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the five Great Lakes lies entirely within the United States?

  • (a)Superior
  • (b)Huron
  • (c)Michigan
  • (d)Ontario

  Answer(c) Michigan — the other four are shared with Canada, the international boundary running through each of them.