Dog River
The name of the Dog River on earlier national topographic maps from the 1960s-1980s was the University River. The Michipicoten First Nation, local community interests and MNR Wawa District worked cooperatively to have the name "Dog River," a previous name of Aboriginal heritage, reinstated as the official name for the river in the 1990's. With the recommendation to establish a provincial park in 1994, Wawa district worked with the Michipicoten First Nation to name the park using the Ojibwa name "Nimoosh" which means "dog".
Details
Date Added to Canadian Geographical Names Database:
August 20, 1991?This is the date when the Government officially recognized the name. More Info
Notes
According to the Canadian Geographical Names Database, it officially switched back from University River back to Dog River on August 20, 1991.
Sources and Further Learning
Biologist and geologist, Louis Agassiz camped at the Dog River in 1848 on his way from Sault Ste. Marie to Thunder Bay. He described Dog River: "At several places we observed terraces, and carried two of them, at various heights, but preserving their relative positions, about two miles, to the Riv. a la Chienne [Dog], where they turned up the valley and extended along its left bank as far as we could see, having an elevation of about two hundred feet. Here, according to intention, we encamped at sunset, fifteen miles from our starting place. This river is deep, and about ten fathoms wide, umber-colored as usual, with a broad expansion inside, which, with the wideness of the valley and the scanty growth on the terraces (doubtless of sand) forming its left bank, permitted an extensive view up the stream into an amphitheatre of high rounded hills, behind which the sun was setting. There are rapids and a fall of about ten feet a quarter of a mile up. We pitched our tents on a spit of sand, broad at the base, and running out in a point across the mouth of the stream to within a few yards of the steep rock of the right bank. Just inside the point, the bottom sunk sheer down twenty feet. Outside there is a bar, having only a few feet of water on it. One of the men collecting firewood on the bank found a bear’s skull, with two shoulder-blades and some vertebrae, stuck in the crotch of a tree. The jaws were very neatly bound together with watiap, and the bones painted with broad stripes of black and vermillion. Inside of the skull was some tobacco, plugged in with birch bark. This is said to be a common token of an Indian grave, marking the dead as a brave hunter. On the bank above were remains of an Indian lodge."
Sources and Further Learning
This history of the river name change comes from the Nimoosh Park Management Statement published by the Ontario Government.
Sources and Further Learning
The International Joint Commission published an article in 2020 about the return of Lake Trout spawning in the Dog River for the first time in decades.