Lake Nipissing

Lake Nipissing lies on a water route between the Ottawa River and Georgian Bay. Canoes reached it by the Mattawa River and portages, then followed the French River west towards Lake Huron. The lake is the homeland of the Nipissing people, whose trading connections joined the St. Lawrence to communities farther inland. From its shores they travelled up the Sturgeon River to exchange French goods for northern furs.

French travellers entered this established network in the early seventeenth century. Étienne Brûlé visited the lake around 1610, and in 1615 Samuel de Champlain travelled the route with Indigenous companions. The trader Jean Nicolet lived among the Nipissing for several years before his recall to Quebec in 1633. For generations afterward, canoe brigades carried furs and trade goods across the lake on their way between the St. Lawrence and the upper Great Lakes.