Kegaska

Kegaska was a named harbour and coastal landmark on the lower north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence in the seventeenth century. Franquelin's map of 1685 recorded Quegasca. Louis Jolliet used the name in 1694 for both the harbour, where he stopped on August 10, and a nearby point. In 1702 the spelling Kegaska appeared in the grant of hunting and fishing territory to Augustin Le Gardeur de Courtemanche. By 1831 the Hudson's Bay Company maintained a trading post here, adding a commercial station to the older harbour name. Admiral Bayfield used the spelling Kegashka in 1837, one of several forms through which the name passed. Its history thus belongs chiefly to the harbour, the hunting and fishing concession and the trading post.