I dive the Lillie Parsons all the time. So, here's a play by play ...
I never wear gloves for protection. I dive bare handed until I need dry gloves due to cold early and late in the season. Our wrecks and rocks are covered with zebra mussels that are incredibly sharp, but I can pull and glide on them by using more surface area. The same principle that yogis use to lie on beds of nails. You usually get cut when you accidentally scrape them. The line is covered in a freshwater algae.
Current was on the high side last week when I dove the Lilly. The current can be higher when the water level is low and open dams allow greater outflow. It's not unusual for divers new to our waters to be caught off guard and flail and struggle -- especially in the shallows near the Lilly. If you don't point your face in the right direction, water will enter your mask when you clear it. It's like clearing a mask in the Ear at Ginnie Springs. I've even done that. Clear ... nope ... water. Turn head a little more ... clear ... water. How about this angle? That worked! I just led a father and son on Monday and the dad was having a lot of trouble at first. He never dove the river before but had lots of traveling and diving experience extensively in dream destinations around Asia. It took him 16 minutes to relax and look like a diver again. You can hear the stress breathing throughout.
I once dove with an Ozark Cave Diving Alliance diver on the A.E. Vickery near where I am as I type this on the US side. He was used to 300+ deep OC dives, Great Lakes wrecks, and high flow caves. After a 150 dive on the Vickery, he surfaced and exclaimed, "What the @%&* was that?" The French Canadian team is using a pull chain installed to prevent divers from trying to pull on the wreck. They are swimming into the current while the divers who made the video are being pushed by it. You can see the air bubbles indicating direction of the current.
The wall beneath the wreck on Sparrow Island has lots of downdrafts and upwellings. At 100 feet, you are in the expressway and pretty much guaranteed a nice smooth drift free of eddies, and up and downs. We have "the long drift" and "the short drift" determined by catch lines that run from the surface on Sparrow vertically along the wall to about 80 feet. If the team doesn't stay tight, separation is easy. Narcolepsy? LOL! Not a good trait in a diver. You do get narced quickly on these drifts. Fear of boats? Yeah. If by boats you mean 600 foot long freighters with props of death. This is the major shipping channel between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes. That ascent was unreal! These guys need to be near the wall with DSMB's deployed. I know the dive operator. Been out with them many times. They tend to get a lot of recreational divers since they are a PADI dive center. The Lilly is pretty recreational for local Canadians and those of us who dive the Canadian side frequently.
If you are thinking about diving the St. Lawrence and have never been here before, please consider hiring a guide no matter what your experience. A guide can baby step you from one wreck to another and show you how we do it here in the 1000 Islands. It's some of the most fun diving on earth when you aren't nearly killing yourself.