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• White Otter Castle
  Woodsman Jimmy McOuat completed this house in 1915 when he was sixty years old. Ever since, people have wondered why and how he built it. McOuat claimed that, as a child in the Ottawa valley, he was once scolded "Ye'll never do no good! Ye'll die in a shack!" and that he resolved late in life to avoid such a fate. Single-handedly, he felled trees, winched them from the woods and hewed them square. With...

• Kenora Thistles, The
  In January 1907, a hockey team from Kenora, comprising E. Giroux (goal), A.H. Ross (point), S.I. Griffis (cover point), T. Hooper (rover), W. McGimsie (centre), R. Beaudro (right wing) and T. Phillips (captain and left wing), defeated the Montreal Wanderers in two challenge games at Montreal to win the Stanley Cup. The team was coached and trained by J.A. Link. The trophy, emblematic of the Canadian championship, had been presented by the Governor General, Baron Stanley of Preston, in 1892. Kenora is the smallest town ever to win the Cup.

• Wolseley Expedition 1870, The
  In August 1870, a force of British regulars and Canadian militia comprising some 1,200 men commanded by Colonel Garnet Wolseley arrived in this area en route to the Red River to establish Canadian authority within the present province of Manitoba. The previous year the Hudson's Bay Company had agreed to transfer control of its western territories to Canada, and some local inhabitants, fearing loss of their lands and interference with their mode of existence, had...

• Last Spike at Feist Lake
  In the 1870s, Canada needed a reliable all-Canadian transportation route between Lake Superior and the western prairie territories it acquired in 1869. After promising a rail connection to British Columbia, the federal government started to build a railway between Thunder Bay and Red River in 1875. It took seven years to complete the 600 kilometre (375 mile) line. Thousands of workers battled mosquitoes and blackflies as they cut trees, blasted granite, bridged chasms and filled...

• Red Lake House
  In the summer of 1790, the Hudson's Bay Company sent James Sutherland from Osnaburgh House to establish a post on Red Lake. Duncan Cameron of the North West Company was already trading there. Although competition in the fur trade was intense, at times violent, the traders on Red Lake stayed on friendly terms. By 1806, when the HBC closed Red Lake House, the post had been at five different locations on the lake. The HBC...

• Founding of the Red Lake Mining District, The
  In 1924, two years after a discovery of gold by Gus McManus, the Ontario Department of Mines published a geological report on this district. Prospecting was thus encouraged, and in 1925 claims were staked by Lorne Howey and George McNeely. Financed through the efforts of Jack Hammell, Howey Gold Mines was incorporated in 1926, and production began in 1930. Although it ceased operations in 1941, successful mines were developed elsewhere within this region by other...

• Canada's Pioneer Airlines
  In February 1926, J.V. Elliot and Harold Farrington, each flying a Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny", made the first in a series of passenger flights from here to the isolated Red Lake mining district. The following month, a Curtiss "Lark" flown by H.A. ("Doc") Oaks inaugurated a regular service from Sioux Lookout to Red Lake. That December, Oaks organized Western Canada Airways, whose aircraft were based at Hudson. One of the earliest airlines in Canada, it was...

• Umfreville's Exploration 1784
  A fur trader, Edward Umfreville, passed here in July 1784. He had been commissioned by the North West Company to discover an alternative to the traditional canoe route to the West via the Grand Portage and Pigeon River, which had come under American control. Leaving Lake Superior, he ascended the Nipigon River and struck westward from Lake Nipigon via an intricate course that included the Wabinosh River, Sturgeon Lake, Lac Seul and the English River...

• Rat Portage Post
  On Old Fort Island a half mile north of here, the Hudson's Bay Company erected a stockaded fur trading post about 1836. This was the first known European structure within present Kenora. In 1861, the post was moved to the mainland, where it formed the nucleus of the community of Rat Portage. Situated on the main canoe route to the West, the post was visited by many persons prominent in Canada's history: including Sir George...

• Reverend Albert Lacombe, O.M.I. 1827-1916, The
  Born at St. Sulpice, Quebec and ordained in 1849, Father Lacombe took up mission work at Fort Edmonton in 1852. The following year, he founded Ste. Anne, first of several Oblate missions he established in what is now Alberta. He won the confidence of the region's Indians and, on occasion, averted serious inter-tribal warfare. Father Lacombe ministered to C.P.R. construction crews, 1880-82, from mission headquarters at Rat Portage (Kenora), where he began construction of a...