Episode 46: The Great Opeongo Lake - Times Before 1893

In this and the next two episodes, I will focus on sharing as much history as I can about Algonquin’s largest body of water, Lake Opeongo. Much of the content comes from a now out-of-print 1998 book by S. Bernard Shaw, called Lake Opeongo:  Untold Stories of Algonquin Park’s Largest Lake. I’m also for the first time, going to try to share as much as I know about the indigenous Lake Opeongo experience.  For this, I depend upon two sources by Chief Kirby Whiteduck of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan including a 2001 Algonquin Park TED TALK and Chapter Two in Mike Walton’s 2009 Algonquin Park: The Human Impact. Other references include:

• Algonquin Park: A Place Like No Other by Roderick MacKay - 2018
• Spirits of the Little Bonnechère by Roderick MacKay 2016 2nd edition
• Algonquin Story by Audrey Saunders 1946
• A History of Canada in 10 Maps by Adam Shoalts 2018
• Protected Places: A History of Ontario’s Provincial Park System by Gerald Killan 1993
• Names of Algonquin - Technical  Bulletin No,  10  Friends  of  Algonquin Park 1991
• It Made the Farmhouse Warm for Winter by Rory MacKay, The Raven, Vol. 63 No.5 Dec 2021
• Trading Places, by Rory MacKay, The Raven Vol. 63, No. 4
• The Algonquins of Pikwkanagan First Nation https://www.algonquinsofpikwakanagan.com

This musical interlude is called Ancient Voices and comes from Dan Gibson’s 2013 Solitudes CD called Shimmer