Quinte

The Bay of Quinte winds along the northeastern shore of Lake Ontario, sheltered by a long peninsula. Its name recalls Kenté, a Cayuga village near the peninsula's narrow neck. In the later seventeenth century Kenté was one of several Haudenosaunee communities on the north shore, near routes leading from the lake into the wooded interior.

At the request of the villagers, the Sulpicians Claude Trouvé and François de Fénelon established a mission at Kenté in 1668. It was abandoned in 1680 as the Cayuga moved and Fort Frontenac grew in importance. A century later, after the American Revolution, Mohawk families allied with Britain travelled by canoe from Lachine and reached the bay on 22 May 1784. They established a new community on its shore.