Lake Simcoe - History

History

Lake Simcoe is a remnant of a much bigger, prehistoric lake known as Lake Algonquin. This lake's basin also included Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, Lake Nipigon, and Lake Nipissing. The melting of an ice dam at the close of the last ice age greatly reduced water levels in the region, leaving the lakes of today.

At the time of the first European contact in the 17th century, the lake was called Ouentironk ("Beautiful Water") by the Wyandot (Huron) natives. In 1687, Lahontan called it Lake Taronto, an Iroquoian term meaning gateway or pass; Taronto had originally referred to The Narrows, a channel of water through which Lake Simcoe discharges into Lake Couchiching. Since then, many subsequent mapmakers adopted this name for it, though cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli is thought to have introduced the more commonly used spelling of Toronto in a map he created in 1695.

The name 'Toronto' found its way to the current city through its use in the name for the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail (or Toronto Passage), a portage running between Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay, that passed through Lake Toronto, which in turn was used as the name for an early French fort located at the foot of the Toronto Passage, on Lake Ontario. The Severn River, its outlet stream, was once called 'Rivière de Toronto' which flows into Georgian Bay's Severn Sound, then called the 'Baie de Toronto'.

The later French traders referred to it as Lac aux Claies, meaning "Lake of Grids (or Trellises)" in reference to the Huron fishing weirs in the lake.

It was renamed by John Graves Simcoe in 1793, not in honour of himself, but in memory of his father, Captain John Simcoe. Captain Simcoe was born on 28 November 1710, in Staindrop, in County Durham, northeast England and served as an officer in the Royal Navy, dying of pneumonia aboard his ship, HMS Pembroke, on 15 May 1759.

The lake is about 30 kilometres (19 mi) long and 25 kilometres (16 mi) wide. Its area is roughly 725 square kilometres (280 sq mi). It is shaped somewhat like a fist with the index finger and thumb extended. The thumb forms Kempenfelt Bay on the west, the wrist Lake Couchiching to the north, and the extended finger is Cook's Bay on the south. Couchiching was at one time thought of as a third bay of Simcoe, known as the Bristol Channel; however, the narrows between the two bodies of water separate them enough to consider this to be another lake. The narrows, known as "where trees stand in the water", an interpretation of the word 'Toronto', was an important fishing point for the First Nations peoples who lived in the area, and the Mohawk term toran-ten eventually gave its name to Toronto by way of the portage route running south from that point, the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail. Regarding the translation of 'Toronto' as meaning "where trees stand in the water", this would have been the likely outcome of the Huron practise of driving stakes into the channel sediments to corrale fish. Fresh-cut saplings placed in the water and sediments would have sprouted branches and leaves, persisting for some time, leading to a place "where trees stand in the water".