Lake of the Woods

This has taken me a bit longer to get round to righting than planned! Sorry!!

I had a few days staying in Kenora on Lake of the Woods, Ontario… this wasn’t a planned stop as to be honest I hadn’t even heard of the place until the day before while looking at maps but as I approached the town and saw the Lake of the Woods I knew I was going to be there a few days to have a look-see! So I will start of with some info about Lake of the Woods.

Lake of the Woods (LotW from now on as I am too lazy to keep writing the full name!) is big… we are talking 68 miles long (at its longest) and 59 miles wide (at the widest point) with area of 1,679 squared miles… to put that in context that’s bigger than the whole of Somerset… or 2.6 times bigger than Surrey (where I grew up). The lake has 14,552 islands and over 65,000 miles of shore (including the islands)! This is a big old lake…

The Lake is quite built up with lake houses seeming to cover vast amounts of shore but not in a tacky crowded way… more in a overly rich playboys getaway kind of way but slightly more classy.

The main (and possibly only) town in the area is Kenora here is what Wiki has to say about its history:

“Kenora’s future site was in the territory of the Ojibway when the first European, Jacques De Noyon, sighted Lake of the Woods in 1688.

Pierre La Vérendrye established a secure French trading post, Fort St. Charles, to the south of present-day Kenora near the current Canada/U.S. border in 1732, and France maintained the post until 1763 when it lost the territory to the British in the Seven Years’ War — until then, it was the most northwesterly settlement of New France. In 1836 the Hudson’s Bay Company established a post on Old Fort Island, and in 1861, the Company opened a post on the mainland at Kenora’s current location.

In 1878, the company surveyed lots for the permanent settlement of Rat Portage (“portage to the country of the muskrat”) — the community kept that name until 1905, when it was renamed Kenora.

Kenora was once claimed as part of the Province of Manitoba, and there are early references to Rat Portage, Manitoba. There was a long lasting argument between the two provinces known as the Ontario-Manitoba boundary dispute. Each province claimed the town as part of their territory and the dispute lasted from 1870 to 1884. Although Ottawa had ruled the town part of Manitoba in 1881, the issue was finally taken up with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council which eventually decided in Ontario’s favour. Kenora officially became part of the province of Ontario in 1889. Boundaries were drawn up for the provinces and the Northwest Angle on Lake of the Woods which definitively drew the borders between Ontario, Manitoba, Canada, and Minnesota, U.S.A.

Gold and the railroad were both important in the community’s early history: gold was first discovered in the area in 1850, and by 1893, 20 mines were operating within 24 km (15 mi) of Rat Portage, and the first Canadian ocean-to-ocean train passed through in 1886 on the Canadian Pacific Railway. Among the entrepreneurs attracted to the town was the Hon. JEP Vereker, a retired British army officer and youngest son of the 4th Viscount Gort

Later, a highway was built through Kenora in 1932, becoming part of Canada’s first coast-to-coast highway in 1943, and then part of the Trans-Canada Highway, placing the community on both of Canada’s major transcontinental transportation routes. The original barrier to the completion of the highway concerned the crossing of the Winnipeg River at two locations. The single span arch bridges are among the longest of their type in North America.

During the Prohibition era in the United States, the Lake of the Woods served as a smuggler’s route for the transport of alcohol.

In December 1883, there was a large fire in Rat Portage, rendering 70 of the town’s then population of 700 homeless.

Rat Portage is mentioned in Algernon Blackwood’s famous 1910 story, “The Wendigo”.

The importance of the logging industry declined in the second part of the 20th century, and the last log boom was towed into Kenora in 1985. The tourist and recreation industries have become more important.”

So anyway, I spent a couple of day exploring the town and tried to get a SUP lesson but alas no such luck! On day 2 the weather turned foul and I hid from the weather and did sweet FA (bad Andy!). On the last day I got some chores done including rewrapping my handlebars (again!) as the tape I had previously bought was rubbish, unfortunately I could only get black tape so eve is looking all serious… boooooooo.

In the evening I took a cruise around the lake on the MS Kenora and had dinner on board, the food was reasonable but I felt I may have missed some of the views as I was stuffing my face!

The cruise had the typical information about the area, some of the history and such. Whilst underway I was lucky enough (thanks to the skipper pointing it out!) to see a number of Bald Eagles which for me was the highlight of the tour!

Right I need sleep so that all you are getting!