History of Chippewa Park
Chapter One

In the beginning was the land.

Rocky points, sandy bays, low-lying marshes, rocks, trees and bluffs, and the best views of the Sleeping Giant in all of Thunder Bay. Its human-like characteristics were accentuated in the glow of each setting sun.

Then there were the people.

For centuries, the Ojibwa had used the lake’s shoreline as a base for their summer fishing. The inland forests were for winter hunting and trapping. By the mid-1800’s some Band members had settled semi-permanently alongside the Jesuit mission on the south bank of the Kaministiquia River. Others, lived further inland and visited only in the summer to do their annual trading at the Hudson’s Bay post.

Then there was the Reserve, the home of today’s Fort William First Nation.

In 1850, local Ojibwa headed by Chief Peau de Chat and other chiefs from around the north shore met with government officials in Sault Ste. Marie. They negotiated a treaty in which they agreed to “… surrender, cede, grant and convey … all their right, title and interest in the whole of the territory …” in the Lake Superior watershed. In return, they were promised the right to continue their traditional practices on Crown lands, an annual payment to each member in perpetuity, and lands that would be set aside for their exclusive occupation and use.

Things went sideways right from the start on the land part of the deal. The survey party that arrived in 1853 was under instructions to mark off a reserve that was about one-fifth the size of what the Band felt had been agreed to in the Sault. Despite vehement protests, the survey went ahead as planned.

Six years later, government officials arrived again. This time, it was to obtain a surrender of the arable land west of the mountain. Five thousand acres were surrendered, under questionable circumstances. The government’s negotiator was pleased to report to his superiors that “the land retained by the Indians is chiefly mountain and swamp.”

The following decades saw a series of smaller surrenders to facilitate mining and military endeavours initiated by governments and local entrepreneurs. Promises were made and not always kept, but the lands remained lost to the Reserve.

A park emerges

In was against the backdrop of this ongoing chipping away of the reserve’s territory that the story of Chippewa Park emerges. It was the result of two separate but interconnected land transactions that changed the shape of the Reserve forever.

First, in 1905, the government of Canada expropriated 1100 acres along the bank of the Kam and Mission Rivers to make way for a proposed Grand Trunk Pacific Railway terminal. The Mission community – church, school, homes, graveyard, everything - was picked up and relocated closer to the mountain and to Squaw Bay. The terminal was never built. The land, however, was retained by its successor, the CNR, for the next hundred years. Included was a 27.7 acre strip along the lakeshore where much of the built portion of Chippewa Park is located and was initially leased by the CNR to the City of Fort William.

 In 1917, the second key transaction took place. This time, it was for the expressed purpose of developing parkland for the citizens of Fort William. It had taken years of discussion, but the Fort William First Nation eventually agreed to surrender 270.1 acres to the city for $25,000 ($466,891 today). This final acquisition was beside the shoreline strip owned by the CNR, and extended the park as far south as Brule Bay.

 Thus, was the way cleared for a great park to be born.

The details of both transactions can be found by going to www.chippewapark.ca/history.

 Next week: Parks Opening Kicked Off with a Splash