CANADA'S PLACE NAMES

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1780, 8 July 1926, Page 8

CANADA'S PLACE NAMES

FROM THE TIME OF THE FUR TRADERS. The investigations of the Geographic Board of Canadla indicate that the early voagers did not go far afield for names for the lakes and rivers on thir route of travel. More than one wellwooded lake bears the name lac des Bois or Wood lake, but the largest and, best known of these is the lake of the ■Woods on the International Boundary between Ontario and Minnesota.

The first-known mention of the lake I occurs in a memoir of Michel Begon, who was Intendant of New France from 1710 to 1726, though he did not reach Canada until 1712. This memoir, which is dated November l!2th, 1716, narrates an exploratory journey made in 1657 or 16SS by Jacques cle Noyon, a native of Three Rivers. De Xoyon ascended the Kaministikwia River - , which falls into Lake Superior at'Fort William, wintered at Rainy Lake, and in the following spring reach-ad "les aux lies, otherwise called Asiniboiles," on entering which "to the left the country is barren and on the right hand side it is provided with all sorts of trees and filled with numerous islands." Lac au,x lies and lac aux Asiniboiles, are evidently French renderings of the names by which the lake was known to the Indians. Indeed, the French historian Margy states that "Minitie," is an Indlian name found in Yerendre's journals. This is 'the Cree word "ministik," which means "island." The French for Island lake is lac aux lies. Lac aux Asiniboiles means "lake of the Assiniboines," a tribe of the Sioux Indians from the headwaters of the IMississipi, whose first Canadian habitat was the region of the Lake of the Woods. , It is as lac de's Asfcenipolis ((Assiniboine Lake) that lake of the Woods figures on numerous French maps published about 1719. Lake of the Woods ' ""st mentioned by the French en- '"" desBois) in Verer Of all the *