Exploring the land just across the Manitoba border: Kenora and Lake of the Woods

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/05/2015 (3797 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

First published in 2006, A Daytripper’s Guide to Manitoba from well-travelled Winnipeg Free Press reporter-at-large Bartley Kives offers a wide range of idiosyncratic adventures available year-round in every region of Manitoba. Completely revised to include new sites such as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the MTS Centre and countless other smaller gems, this edition also features, for the first time, day trips to northwestern Ontario, which everyone knows is really part of Manitoba. There will be a book launch tonight at McNally Robinson Booksellers (1120 Grant Ave.), beginning at 7 p.m.

 

For all intents and purposes, northwestern Ontario can be considered part of Manitoba. Kenora, the biggest community in the region, is only 205 kilometres from Winnipeg and an excruciating 1,900 from Toronto, the Ontario provincial capital.

Thousands of Winnipeggers own cottages in and around spectacular Lake of the Woods, a Canadian Shield lake dotted with 14,500 islands, while many more Manitobans treat the area as a weekend-getaway destination.

Northwest Ontarians, meanwhile, see Winnipeg as a place to shop, visit a medical specialist or go out for a night on the town. The bonds between the two areas are so strong, some people in the Kenora-Rainy River region periodically threaten to secede from Ontario and start sending their taxes to Winnipeg instead of Toronto.

This ambiguity is hardly a recent phenomenon. When Europeans first visited the region, Lake of the Woods was a no-man’s land where the Cree, Sioux and, later, Anishinaabe struggled for dominance. One of the bloodier episodes in early Canadian history took place on Lake of the Woods in 1736, when a French-Canadian canoe party was ambushed by Sioux near what’s now the Canada-United States border.

During the fur trade, northwestern Ontario witnessed a rapid influx of traders and settlers, as Lake of the Woods and it upstream source, the Rainy River, comprised part of the main trade route between what was then the Northwest Territories and Upper Canada.

After Canada became a sovereign nation, the region again became the subject of dispute, as Manitoba and Ontario both claimed the pioneer settlement of Rat Portage — later the “ra” in “Kenora” — as their own. Between 1870 and 1881, each province built rival courts and jails and enlisted rival police officers to enforce rival sets of laws. At one point, a band of Ontario agitators burned down the Manitoba jailhouse.

The jurisdictional jockeying finally ended in 1889, when Ottawa awarded the Lake of the Woods region to Ontario. To this day, some Kenorans still refer to their western neighbours as “Tobans” in less-than-flattering tones, but Manitobans, by and large, are oblivious to the insult.

Up until the last few decades, logging and mining formed the backbone of the region’s economy, but tourism now serves that role. In the summer, Kenora’s population swells from a town of 15,400 to a boreal-forest metropolis of 40,000 or more.

If you love fishing, sailing, canoeing, kayaking, or racing around in a motorboat, you can spend a lifetime exploring the wider area, which boasts some of world’s best flatwater paddling and some of the Canadian Shield’s most attractive scenery. Backcountry travel is increasingly popular on Crown land across northwestern Ontario, to the point where fishers and wilderness travellers are actually beginning to put stress on once-isolated lakes.

Tourism is such a strong component of the economy, you’re just as likely to meet Winnipeggers and Americans on the water as you are Ontarians.

Just one word of warning: the locals may still be holding some sort of quiet grudge. Burgers ordered at northwestern Ontario greasy spoons sometimes come slathered with an amazingly thick layer of relish.

What else could explain that, besides a grudge?

 

Northwestern Ontario highlights

Kenora: A sort of Venice in the centre of the Canada, this resort city has five beaches and a half-dozen harbours that serve as the main gateway to Lake of the Woods.

Lake of the Woods: One of the most beautiful lakes in North America boasts more than 14,000 islands, 104,000 kilometres of shoreline to explore and historical sites covering thousands of years of history.

Experimental Lakes Area: One of the continent’s finest flatwater paddling regions offers dozens of interconnected lakes to explore — completely without fees, as most of the region is Crown land.

Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre: The largest intact set of ancient burial mounds in Canada, an indigenous spiritual centre and an archeological site dating back 5,000 years on the north side of the Rainy River.

Woodland Caribou Provincial Park: The eastern neighbour of Manitoba’s Atikaki Provincial Wilderness Park is a roadless protected area home to the upper reaches of the Bloodvein River and hundreds of kilometres of flatwater-paddling routes.