Protection sought for the Nottawasaga River

AWARE Simcoe February 25 2013

Until December, 2012, each and every Canadian had the right to travel on 40,000 lakes and 2.5 million rivers across the land. But last year we lost these ancient rights, born of a long history of travelling the waterways. 

The Conservative government’s omnibus budget bill abolished the Navigable Waters Protection Act and replaced it with the Navigation Protection Act, which applies only to the 97 lakes and 63 rivers listed under the legislation. 

The Nottawasaga River, a key Southern Ontario waterway running through Dufferin, Grey and Simcoe counties into Lake Huron, is not on that list. AWARE Simcoe has launched a petition to have the Nottawasaga protected under the new act. Link to petition

By Anne Learn Sharpe AWARE Essa February 25 2013 

From the time the first humans reached its shores, the Nottawasaga River has been a vital travel corridor. Fishing, trade, exploration, war, commerce, science, recreation —over the years the placid currents of the river have carried people intent on all these pursuits, leading many to find their place in history. Navigation on the Nottawasaga has played a central role in supporting the economic activity of the region as it has changed over time, and the river continues to provide new opportunities. 

Of course, the river is much more than a transportation route; it nurtures countless species of plant and animal life whose well-being is directly linked to our own in ways we are just beginning to realize. This natural heritage attracts people to the river so that it remains central to the life of Simcoe, Dufferin and Grey Counties. If we want to continue to travel where the river can take us we need to give it our best protection, to treat it as if we couldn’t live without it. 

The story of navigation on the Nottawasaga speaks for itself: 

The Nottawasaga River became part of a trade route for the Ouendat and Petun nations long before Europeans arrived in the 17th century. Following the Nottawasaga to Georgian Bay in canoes expertly designed for river travel, the Ouendat traded with the northern tribes: their corn and produce for meat and furs from the Algonquin. The Nottawasaga was the western boundary of their territory, an area almost completely surrounded by water. The name Ouendat, a land set apart, an island, is derived from its geography. 

With the arrival of the French, competition for trade intensified, and the Nottawasaga Route became one of the economic corridors that shaped relations between Europeans and First Nations. Champlain’s dream of trade between equal nations was lost in the rivalries of French and English, Iroquois and Ouendat. When the Iroquois came north in 1648 to destroy the Ouendat and their French allies, they travelled along the Nottawasaga Route.

Yonge Street

As European settlement increased, so did pressure for efficient travel. In the late 1700’s, John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, with an eye to military security and economic development, ordered the building of Yonge Street from York (Toronto) to Holland Landing on Lake Simcoe, bypassing the Humber and Holland Rivers and streamlining the Nottawasaga Route. 

Lieutenant Governor Simcoe’s foresight in improving the Nottawasaga Route proved invaluable in 1812. Word of the outbreak of the war travelled by express canoe from Fort George at Niagara-on-the-Lake along the Nottawasaga Route to Fort St. Joseph near Sault Ste Marie. The British were able to capture Fort Michilimackinac at the northern end of Lake Michigan and secure that access to Upper Canada from the Americans.

In February 1814, the Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles, a relief expedition of more than 200 men left Kingston and travelled part of the Nottawasaga Route. At the forks of the Nottawasaga and Marl Creek, they spent two months building 29 bateaux. After navigating the Nottawasaga River to Georgian Bay, one part of the expedition arrived at Fort Michilimackinac in May with vital supplies for the British soldiers. Because of its significance in the successful outcome of the War of 1812, Glengarry Landing, site of the shipbuilding, is a National Historic Site of Canada.

In that same spring, the schooner Nancy, formerly a private cargo vessel in the fur trade, was transporting supplies that arrived via the Nottawasaga Route from the mouth of the Nottawasaga River to Fort Michilimackinac. On receiving word that American ships had left Detroit to disrupt British supply lines, Lieutenant Miller Worsley hid the Nancy two miles up the Nottawasaga River. Three American ships arrived in August at the mouth of the Nottawasaga and by accident discovered the Nancy in her hiding place. Badly outgunned and outmanned, the Nancy received a direct hit, burned to the waterline and sank. Lieutenant Worsley and his men escaped and eventually managed to capture two of the American ships for the British, who used them to supply Fort Michilimackinac.

After the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, the British used the Nottawasaga Route to bring supplies and personnel to posts at Drummond Island and Penetanguishene. David Thompson, explorer and surveyor, passed this way en route to Montreal in 1824. In 1825 Captain John Franklin travelled the Nottawasaga Route on the initial stage of his Arctic journey in search of a Northwest Passage.

In the 19th century the tall pines of Simcoe County were a lucrative resource harvested originally for use as masts for the British navy. When the tallest pines were gone, sawn lumber and square timber became staples, and sawmills proliferated. Trees were cut in the winter and dragged to the nearest river’s edge, then floated out to the river’s mouth when the ice melted. The Nottawasaga River, with its access to Georgian Bay, was an important early route to market. Railroads increasingly became the transport of choice from mills to market, but the rivers remained the link between harvested trees and mills. Between 1851 and 1861 the lumber industry in Simcoe County was at its height. The village of Angus, with its proximity to the Nottawasaga River, once had 17 sawmills.

Artefacts dating from between 2000 BC and 1600 BC from a fishing camp on the Nottawasaga River are evidence that for a very long time humans have gathered by these waters in hopes of catching a meal. Today anglers still stop along the banks of the river, singly or in small groups, or drift by in canoes to cast their lines. And for good reason: 

• the Nottawasaga River provides spawning habitat for the largest run of wild Chinook salmon in the Lake Huron ecosystem

• due to its large watershed and supportive habitat, the river has one of the largest runs of wild steelhead in Ontario

• the Nottawasaga supports the largest identified rainbow trout genetic diversity of any Ontario river system, with 18 distinct strains

• native brook trout are found in the headwaters of the river

• the lower river supports a warmwater fishery (smallmouth bass, walleye, northern pike, channel catfish)

• although Lake Sturgeon, a threatened species, cannot be fished, the Nottawasaga is one of a handful of significant producers in the Lake Huron basin. Catching a glimpse of this most ancient and largest fish in Ontario is enough to inspire fish stories.

The Essa Salmon Festival, held in September, celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2012. Featuring a fishing derby and related community events, it attracts sportspeople from the region and beyond.

The Nottawasaga River flows through one of the largest undisturbed wetland tracts in Canada. The Minesing Wetlands, designated by the RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands as having international importance, are the Holy Grail for naturalists, biologists and outdoor enthusiasts. Diversity defines this wetland: a diversity of habitats—fen, marsh, bog, swamp and forest; Carolinian Forest species in one area and Boreal Forest in another. A diversity of rare and unique species with names that could inspire the laziest to launch a canoe—plants like the Eastern Prairie White Fringed Orchid or Marsh Valerian; trees like Hackberry and Buttonbush; butter, dragon or damselflies like the Blue-tipped Dancer or the Giant Swallowtail; Map Turtles and Wood Turtles. And the birds: two colonies of Great Blue Heron, a colony of Black Tern, a Bald Eagle nest.

Local commercial enterprises such as outdoor adventure tours and outfitters, sporting good stores and canoe manufacturers depend on the navigability of the river, the health of the fishery, and the attraction of the wetlands to build their businesses. As one outfitter says: “A thriving beautiful river attracts tourists and locals to explore it… a lot of people who go on the river are locals…but we also get a lot of visitors. We get lots of day trippers from Toronto, people who are staying a few days from other parts of Ontario and even visitors from overseas.”

The Minesing Wetlands act as a natural flood control stabilizing water levels in all the rivers of the Nottawasaga Watershed.

Wasaga Beach, located on the southeastern shores of Nottawasaga Bay, is the longest freshwater beach in the world. It’s 14 kilometres (8.6 miles) long and visited by 2 million people every summer. 

The story of navigation on the Nottawasaga River is our story. It began when humans arrived at the river and realized that as well as providing sustenance the river was a way to get from here to somewhere else, to expand our way of life. Organizations such as the Steelheaders, the Healthy Living Committee in Essa and the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority recognize its importance and organize projects to improve the navigability of the Nottawasaga and the rivers that flow into it. The river holds our history — knowledge of how we became who we are. And it holds our future, a future that will be determined by the kind of choices we make now to protect the Nottawasaga River.  

The Visible Past, Adelaide Leitch

All for a Beaver Hat, E. C. Drury

A History of Simcoe County, Andrew F. Hunter

Nine Mile Portage  

Nottawasaga Steelheaders  

War of 1812  

NVCA map of Nottawasaga River Canoe Route 

Minesing Wetlands Biological Inventory, February 2007. Robert L. Bowles, Jolene Laverty, David Featherstone 

Nine Mile Portage