OFFICIAL ALGONQUIN PARK PUBLICATION

NEW PUBLICATIONS Lake Opeongo Ice-out Dates Since 1964 Showing Trend Lake Opeongo Ice-out Dates Since 1964 Showing Trend Vol. 55, No. 1 • June 1, 2014 Butterflies of Algonquin Provincial Park May 15 May 15 – latest date In Algonquin, 88 butterfly species have been identified representing most of the North American butterfly families. The new 2013 May 10 edition includes the Checklist and Seasonal Status of the Butterflies BUTTERFLIES May 5 The of Algonquin Provincial Park. $4.95

official a lgonquin park publication ONLY 95 $4. April 30 ALGONQUIN PARK BUTTERFLY CHECKLIST NOW INCLUDED of Algonquin Provincial Park April 25 Birds of Algonquin Provincial Park Over 50 years of careful data-keeping on the 279 bird species that April 20 aven A Natural and Cultural History Digest have been recorded in Algonquin has uncovered some significant April 15 ecological trends in Algonquin’s bird populations, resulting in a birds special 5-page section in this new edition. April 10 R SHOP ONLINE: algonquinpark.on.ca April 5 East Side Story: A Celebration of Algonquin Provincial Park by Rory MacKay Available at the Algonquin Visitor Centre Bookstore, the East Gate and West Gate March 31 March 29 – earliest date Try to imagine Algon- It has often been said that

Year 1964 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98 2000 02 04 06 08 10 12 14 quin Park without the there are two Algonquin mighty rapids and wide Parks: the developed area Moose Viewing Tips Compiled by Ministry of Natural Resources: Algonquin Fisheries Assessment Unit 2014 valley of the along the Frank MacDougall In spring, Moose can be seen regularly along below Lake Travers, Parkway/Highway 60 cor- Highway 60, attracted to the slightly salty Be FishingSmart . . . without the sandy beaches ridor; and the much less water left in roadside ditches after winter road Remind­ ers­­ while fishing in Algon­quin: of Grand Lake, without visited and less accessible maintenance. Unfortunately, the proximity of the cliffs of the Barron Park interior. In fact there Moose to Highway 60 can create a serious hazard • Trout fishing season opens April 26, 2014. Canyon, and without the are three Algonquin Parks; for motorists. Stay alert as Moose can be on No live baitfish are permitted. Little Bonnechere trails the two already mentioned the road or standing in the ditches and are often • No fishing is permitted within 100 m of a water control dam. and the Eastern Pines and the much different “East surprisingly hard to see. Each year too many • No fishing within 300 metres down­stream Backpacking Trail. The Side,” the story of which we Moose and other wildlife are killed in vehicle • Algonquin Park of 1913, relate here. collisions. Reduce your speed (especially at of Lake Opeongo’s Annie Bay dam. with its twenty townships The forests of the East night) and help save the lives of Algonquin Park’s PETER FERGUSON Daily catch and possession limit for Lake Trout • and an area of about a Side are different from those Moose and possibly even your own. Bull Moose in spring. is 2 per person (1 per person with a 1914 - 100 years CONEYBEARE HOWARD million acres, was an on the west side of the Park. If you see a Moose, pull safely off the traveled Conservation Licence). impressive territory, but Being lower in elevation the portion of the road and turn on your hazard lights to warn other drivers. If possible, Daily catch and possession limit for trout is 5 per person, no more than two Algonquin’s East Side park in a nearby parking lot. If drivers flash their vehicle headlights at you in • the addition of six full climate is warmer, receiving of which can be Lake Trout (2 per person with not more than one Lake Trout, townships and another on average 21 more frost- Algonquin Park, there’s a good chance a Moose is ahead or maybe even a “Moose with a Conservation Licence). Jam” (a traffic jam caused by Moose watchers). If you exit the vehicle, watch for four half-townships on the east side of the Park free days a year. It is also drier because as Be aware some lakes have slot limits. Check the Algonquin Information traffic and ensure you keep a safe and respectful distance from wildlife. • a century ago in 1914 is well worth celebrating. the prevailing westerly winds rise above the Guide for a list. That addition of land brought the Park uplands to the west they cool and drop much Moose are large and powerful animals. Please show them respect. • Worms are not native to Algonquin and remaining worms should be taken home closer to being an area of “between of the moisture they contain as snow or or thrown in the trash – not on the ground! twenty and thirty townships,” which rain, leaving the “east side” in a partial WINTER TICK IN SPRING * refer to the Ontario Recreational Fishing Regulations Summary for complete details Clerk of Forestry Robert Phipps rain shadow. Also, water drainage The winter tick is one of many parasites that affect moose. The aggressive had proposed as a Forest Reserve in through the sandy soils in the east is engorgement of female winter ticks causes moose to obsessively groom, scratch The Visitor Centre offers FREE WiFi internet access 1884. Legislation passed in 1910 had more rapid than in the richer soils of with their hind hooves, and rub furiously against trees to relieve the irritation. …and while there, don’t forget to check out The Friends of Algonquin Park permitted additions of lands adjacent glacial till to the west. The sands and deep This vigorous grooming results in damage to their protective coat of hair Bookstore and Nature Shop, or the Sunday Creek Café. to the Park by Provincial Cabinet alone, river channels of the Petawawa and Barron leading to premature winter hair loss. thus streamlining acquisitions. are remnants of the major melt-water algonquinpark.on.ca MNR# 4575 3K P.R. 06 01 14 ISSN 0701-6972 (print) ISSN 1927-8624 (online) © Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2014 drainage system that flowed there about nine grounds of the Algonquin People changed and wood chips, branches and other debris in their farm. Supplies may also have been carried that patrolled in the summer commonplace interruptions thousand years ago as a a result of the retreat diminished as the loggers advanced. wake that became fuel for fires, both natural way to support the men constructing a new rail of 1916 was also an artist. to the sleep of campers, until of the massive glaciers that once covered much Back then, there was no Sand Lake Gate and human-caused. As was the case with the line across the east and north side of the Park. Stationed at Achray in a that section of the Canadian of . and no road midway between the Petawawa townships included in the Algonquin Park of Opened in 1915, it was part of the Canadian cabin dubbed the “Out-Side- National Railway line closed and the Barron rivers as today, at 1893, the poor quality of the soil that remained in Northern Railway, a transcontinental route to In,” Tom Thomson painted in 1995. A station building least until the early 1950s. Public these East Side townships prevented settlement compete with the Canadian Pacific Railway. many sketches of the east came and went, as did various access to Achray was only by by all but a very few hardy souls. side landscape, including one maintenance buildings. The train until 1963. By no means A few squatters (settlers without deeds) at Grand Lake from which stone house (completed in was the area “roadless” during the cleared small farms along the Bonnechere Road his famous canvas “The Jack the 1940s) and the log cabin Nineteenth Century. Each lumber in the 1870s. A rail route had been surveyed Pine” was painted. in which Tom Thomson company constructed “tote roads” through the Bonnechere Valley and then west The rugged landscape that stayed are physical reminders and “portage roads” through the and north to Kioshkokwi Lake, there to join Thomson painted is the same of times past. Interior forest, to bring in supplies and with the Canadian Pacific Railway. The railway landscape that we see today, campsites became the drive- “winter roads” over which horse- was constructed along the rather with the scrubby second- in campground. Despite drawn sleighs carried timbers and than along the Bonnechere route. Although growth forests of 1914 having the comings and goings of ALGONQUIN PARK ARCHIVES: RS-A-1 ALGONQUIN PARK ALGONQUIN PARK ARCHIVES: V.B. GRAY ARCHIVES: V.B. ALGONQUIN PARK logs to the waterways. As early as the prosperity anticipated by settlement near grown into timber that still people, the landscape has Fishing party loading on train at Achray in 1925. 1852 a road extended through the a railroad did not materialize, squatters Paddy Achray train station. supports the local economy. remained remarkably wild. Exactly when humans arrived on the scene valley of the Bonnechere River, connecting Garvey, Dennis McGuey, James McIntyre, and Rangers were assigned to the new section of The University of Toronto Michael Runtz, naturalist is uncertain. Archaeological evidence tells Eganville with the lumber company depot farms Ronald McDonald remained on their farms. park to watch for poachers, and especially to held student forestry camps AND ARCHIVES CANADA: 4203786 LIBRARY and author of The Explorer’s Artist Tom Thomson fishing, c. 1915. us that for thousands of years the Algonquin at Basin Depot near Basin Lake, on the upper They grew a few crops, raised a few sheep and patrol the new rail line and the men working at Achray, from 1924 to 1935. Guide to Algonquin Park, People and their ancestors seasonally hunted Bonnechere at a place called “The Village,” cattle, and, assisted by their wives, provided on it. There were so few lakes in the new Some of the pioneering techniques of modern considers the East Side to be a special place. and fished the lands and waters that would at Chamberlain’s Depot at White Partridge lodgings for men travelling to and from the territory that the Superintendent of the Park forestry were developed in the Petawawa One reason is that it is much less travelled than become Algonquin Park. After first contact Lake, and at the depot farms of Mr. Varin and lumber camps nearby. The men worked at recommended that the park rangers in the Management Unit, which was established in the west side of the Park, since there are fewer with Europeans in 1613, that traditional usage Mr. McDonnell south of Radiant Lake. Branch whatever they could to earn extra money. Bonnechere country particularly be supplied 1945 and was one of the first such management routes. He considers a visit to the East began to change. Beaver and other fur-bearing roads extended to Grand Lake and Lake Travers. Some were hired as government fire rangers, with a horse rather than a canoe. areas in Canada. The last river drive of logs Side to be a natural tonic, an escape into “the animals were trapped and exchanged for metal Stuart and Grier’s depot farm near Pretty Lake or were hired as dam operators for the lumber down the took place in 1959 real world” away from the world of computers axes and cooking pots, at trading posts on the was accessed from the north, over a bridge companies. Some mined a local mica deposit. and a sawmill operated on Lake Travers until and onerous obligations: Ottawa River or at smaller outposts at Lake crossing the mighty Petawawa River not far Any extra cattle were sold “on the hoof” to mills were removed from the Park in the early “I love that part of Algonquin for a number Opeongo on the Madawaska River, Golden downstream from Lake Travers. the local lumber camps. Their boys grew up 1970s. of reasons. You can go for hours without seeing Lake on the Bonnechere River, and (possibly) without benefit of formal schooling, heading a person. Yet there is as much diversity of life Grand Lake on the . off to the lumber camps as early as age ten. The there as in other parts of Algonquin. Also it The land yielded other important resources girls learned about household chores and had a is very different because of the geological to Europeans. Great forests of pine grew on the few lessons in reading and writing from their history, with its outwash plain; the forest type sandy soil along the tributaries of the Ottawa mother. Annie Roach was the oldest daughter of is different, and the elevation is lower. And you River. Loggers in search of pine suitable in size the man who ran Basin Depot for the McLachlan have a lot of interesting plants and animals not to square into timbers for export to England Company. For a time she taught her sisters and a found in western Algonquin. The very fact that began to work their way up the Petawawa few McGuey children in the small log building it is not explored that often is also a big thing; (then Neswabic), Barron (then Pittowais) and that stands there to this day. when you go there you make new discoveries.” Bonnechere rivers as early as 1830. By 1867, Then in 1914 Algonquin Park was expanded. Whether your personal discovery is a ALGONQUIN PARK ARCHIVES: D.LEGROS ALGONQUIN PARK they had reached the headwaters of those Those settlers of the Bonnechere who had not Park Superintendent Frank MacDougall established fungus, plant or animal, an old foundation, rivers, deep within what would become the ARCHIVES: D.P.COULSON ALGONQUIN PARK given up their farms earlier were required to a Deputy Chief Ranger headquarters at Achray in a scenic vista, or a wilderness camping

Basin Depot cabin was built in 1892 and is the GRAY ARCHIVES: V.B. ALGONQUIN PARK Park. Hundreds of men, in groups of about leave. Although not having title to the land, 1931. Construction of the Stone House to provide experience, the East Side of Algonquin Park is oldest building still standing in Algonquin Park. It is Canada’s famous landscape artist Tom Thomson an office and accommodation there began in 1933. fifty, spent the winters living in camboose located adjacent to the site of an 1850s abandoned Garvey, McGuey, the widow McDonald, and worked as a fire ranger at Achray during the summer worth a visit. shanties scattered through the forests of pine. logging depot and a 1950s lumbering camp. Tom O’Hare, who just had a small clearing, were of 1916. He stayed in this ranger cabin and painted Designated as a Deputy Chief Ranger’s We can all be thankful the lands added The thousands of hewn timbers they cut were In the 1880s, surveyors dividing up financially compensated for their abandoned the “Out-Side-In” sign and placed it on the porch of headquarters in 1931, Achray has seen many to the Park in 1914 had attracted so few the cabin where a replica is now. moved to the seaport of Quebec, and as many the townships of the for buildings. Sleighs continued to transport transformations. Over the years many lake settlers, so that one hundred years later we can saw logs were taken to Ottawa, all floated along settlement noted the extent to which the forests supplies to Basin Depot and north to Grand Before 1930, a separate group of rangers and river names have changed. The roar of celebrate the inclusion of those townships in with the spring melt-waters. Traditional hunting had been burned. The old-time loggers had left Lake where J. R. Booth ran a lumber camp and patrolled for fire. One of the fire rangers who diesel engines and the screech of rail cars were Algonquin Park.