Canada · CA

Onakawana River

The Onakawana River is a small, swift river in the unorganized far north of Cochrane District, Ontario, lying deep in the boreal wilderness of the James Bay lowlands. An official Canadian geographical name since 1949, it runs roughly parallel to the larger Abitibi River and slips into that river well above the Moose River, which drains northward into James Bay. This is not a town or a park with a gate and a fee: it is a stretch of true backcountry water, found on maps but rarely visited, the kind of place that draws paddlers, anglers and northern-history buffs who want wild, undeveloped Ontario. What gives the Onakawana its character is the contrast between its quiet, cold, fast-moving water and a surprising human story written right into its banks. The west shore of the river exposes seams of lignite — low-rank coal first noted by Hudson's Bay Company traders in the 1670s and briefly mined in the early twentieth century. Decades of exploration and a large proposed mine-and-power project came and went, but development never happened, so the river and its surrounding muskeg and boreal forest have stayed free-flowing and largely untouched.