Manitoulin Island is a Canadian island in Lake Huron, in the province of Ontario. It is the largest island in a freshwater lake in the world.

Geography and Geology

Manitoulin Island location in the Great Lakes

The island is physiographically part of Southern Ontario, an "eastward extension of the Interior Plains, a region characterized by low relief and sedimentary underpinnings". It consists mainly of dolomite. It is a continuation of the Bruce Peninsula and Niagara Escarpment, a geological structure running south into Niagara Falls and continuing into New York. The Cup and Saucer Trail, which climbs the escarpment, provides a spectacular lookout over the island.

Culture

Cup and Saucer Hiking Trail.

During the summer, the population (12,600 permanent residents) on the island grows by more than a quarter due to the popularity of boating and other activities offered to tourists. The island, along with several smaller neighbouring islands, constitutes the Manitoulin District census division of Ontario.

Year-round motor-vehicle access to the island is available via the one-lane Little Current Swing Bridge, which crosses the North Channel at Little Current. From late May to early October, a daily passenger-vehicle ferry, the MS Chi-Cheemaun (Ojibwe for "Big Canoe"), travels between Tobermory on the tip of the Bruce Peninsula and South Baymouth.

MS Chi-Cheemaun passenger-vehicle ferry at South Baymouth

Manitoulin Island's soil is relatively alkaline, which precludes the growth of common northern Ontario flora such as blueberries, but allows for the island's trademark hawberries. These berries are so distinctive that people born on the island are referred to as "Haweaters". Each year on the August long weekend, the island hosts the Haweater Festival. The festival is a large tourist draw and includes parades, firework shows, craft shows, and rural competitions such as horse pulls.

The island is also home to the Mounted Animal Nature Trail, made famous by the Canadian band The Arrogant Worms.

History

Manitoulin means spirit island in the Ojibwe language. The island was a sacred place for the native Anishinaabe people who were Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi.

The North Channel was part of the route used by the voyageurs to reach Lake Superior. The first known European to settle on the island was Father Joseph Poncet, a French Jesuit, who set up a mission near Wikwemikong in 1648. The Jesuits called the island "Isle de Ste. Marie". Diseases introduced by the visitors had a devastating effect on the island's population. Raids from the south by the Five Nations Iroquois drove the remaining people from the island by 1650. According to oral tradition, the island was burned to purify it as they left and it remained largely unsettled for the next 150 years.

Native people (Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi) began to return to the island following the War of 1812. The island was ceded to the Crown in 1836 and set aside as a refuge for natives. Jean-Baptiste Proulx re-established a Roman Catholic mission in 1838 which the Jesuits took over in 1845. In 1862, the Manitoulin Island treaty opened up the island for settlement by non-native people. The Wikwemikong chief did not accept this treaty and that reserve remains unceded.

See also

• Barrie Island

External links

• Manitoulin Tourism Association
• Manitoulin Living
• The Making of the Manitoulin Treaty of 1836
• The Making of the Manitoulin Treaty of 1862
• Manitoulin, an essay about Ojibway Indians and Lumbermen by Harold Nelson Burden (1895)

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