Mékinac

Lake Mékinac stretches through the wooded hills of the Saint-Maurice country, draining south by the Mékinac River into the larger river. Its name is related to Indigenous words for a turtle or turtle shell. In an Algonquian account of creation, a muskrat brings a grain of sand from beneath the water and places it on the back of Mékinac the turtle, from which the earth is formed. The lake and its river lie within the watershed long inhabited by the Atikamekw.