The Mattawa Route

When west-bound voyageurs left the Ottawa at Mattawa, "the forks," they faced 11 portages in the next 40 miles. The Mattawa, or Petite-Rivière, was a key link in the historic canoe route between Montréal and the upper Great Lakes and the Northwest, because its headwaters are separated from Lake Nipissing and the Lake Huron drainage only by the La Vase portages. This route had already been used for millennia by Indians before Europeans first saw it in the early 17th century. For more than 200 years afterward, it was one of Canada's main highways of exploration and commerce.

Ontario · Canada