Attawapiskat Lake

Attawapiskat Lake lies in the Kenora District of northwestern Ontario. The Otoskwin River and other streams feed it, and its two outflows, the Attawapiskat River and the North Channel, carry the water east toward James Bay. The river's name comes from limestone islands within 100 kilometres of its mouth, which Swampy Cree called tawâpiskâ. Long east-west arms and islands make sheltered channels through boreal forest and muskeg.

Swampy Cree families fished, hunted and travelled on the lake and its rivers long before European trade goods arrived, and the Attawapiskat and Otoskwin route linked the lake to its shores and to the fur trade. In 1814 George Budge founded a Hudson's Bay Company wintering post on a long peninsula in the middle of the lake. It was abandoned in 1817, reopened in 1820 and closed again a year later, which shows how hard it was to keep a trading post running at this remote interior site.