Category: Quetico Park People

For over three decades Shirley compiled information about Quetico’s natural and human history. To accomplish this, she took extended fact finding canoe trips into the interior of Quetico, worked with the Elders of the Lac La Croix First Nation to make their history and contributions to the area available to others, read Quetico Park research… Continue reading Shirley Peruniak – Farewell to a Quetico Legend

The XY Company was a Canadian fur trade enterprise that was formed in 1797 by a group of men that were disenchanted with Simon McTavish’s leadership of the NorthWest Company. They were in direct and sometimes rabid competition with the NorthWest Company who labeled their packs NW; hence the new group called themselves by the… Continue reading Return of the XY Company

Originally published June 10th 2004, revised January 25, 2010 With the opening of Highway 11 from Thunder Bay to Atikokan in 1956, there was, for the first time, road access to the northern part of Quetico Park. One of the people who drove that road and started a canoe trip at French Lake that summer… Continue reading Shirley Peruniak: Quetico Park Naturalist

In the spring of 1942, sixteen-year-old Bob Hayes landed at the Bayley Bay Ranger station on Basswood Lake. Years later, he remembers thinking that “I thought I was descending into the ultimate paradise.” Since he was coming from Beaverhouse Lake, where he had worked on a walleye spawning crew, he already knew that working and… Continue reading Bob & Leone Hayes: A Quetico Romance

Here’s to You, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson Most people come to Atikokan, Ontario to paddle canoes; the Robinson’s, however, came to Atikokan to build them. They also happily put their own canoes to use by paddling the numerous lakes, rivers and creeks that are found on this portion of the Canadian shield. Atikokan is justifiably… Continue reading Robinsons of Souris River Canoes

Joe and Vera Meany are now retired in their home along a river about 50 km from Atikokan. For 26 years, from 1971 to 1996, they were the Quetico Park Rangers at the Ranger Station on Lac la Croix. During their years in Quetico, the Meanys built a strong reputation as extremely competent and helpful… Continue reading Joe and Vera Meany: 26 Years in Quetico

 At a special moment during a canoe trip in Quetico, you may have felt that you had arrived in a place where few, if any, people had ever been. It may have been at the end of an overgrown, seldom used portage, on the top of a ridge overlooking a spruce bog, or even in… Continue reading Quetico’s First Explorers

Some people go into Quetico to fish, some to find solitude and others for the scenery and wildlife. Others, however, like Charles “Chuck” Farnum and his extended family, are “bush-whackers” extraordinaire; they seek out and explore places that are seldom visited. If Chuck Farnum, the clan elder, wouldn’t have been become a doctor, he would… Continue reading Chuck Farnum: Bushwhacker Extraordinaire

From 1971 to 1975, Bill Muir was the staff botanist at the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) Wilderness Field Station on Basswood Lake. For those five summers, Muir, a Biology professor at Carleton College, taught a field course in botany. During this time he travelled over two thousand miles with his students in the… Continue reading Bill Muir: Boundary Waters Botanist

A few summers ago, Betty Powell Skoog returned to the homestead on Saganagons Lake in Quetico Park where she was born and spent the first fifteen years of her life. This beautiful site on the eastern end of the lake was home to three generations of Powells. During their half-century on Saganagons, five children were… Continue reading Return to the Powell Homestead on Saganagons Lake