Lake Superior Provincial Park

The park runs about eighty kilometres along Lake Superior with the highway threading between the shore and the hills, giving one of the best coastal drives in the country. Old Woman Bay is the signature stop, a crescent of cobble under a two-hundred-metre cliff. Agawa Rock carries Ojibwe pictographs painted in red ochre on a vertical face at the waterline, including Misshepezhieu, a horned underwater lynx; reaching them means a short but genuinely awkward scramble onto a sloping ledge above deep cold water, and the site closes when the lake is rough. The paintings are estimated at a few hundred years old.

History

People of various cultures lived in this area for more than 2000 years, the oldest artefacts dating to about 500 BC, and the Ojibwe painted the pictographs at Agawa Rock with powdered hematite and animal fat some 150 to 400 years ago. The American ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft published the first written description of them in 1851, and when Ontario established the park in 1944 there was no road access; Highway 17 now runs through it (Wikipedia, Lake Superior Provincial Park).

What you'll find

• The Agawa pictographs - ochre paintings including the horned water lynx.
• Old Woman Bay - a cobble crescent under a two-hundred-metre cliff.
• The coastal highway - Highway 17 running between shore and hills.
• The inland lakes - canoe routes and waterfalls behind the shore.

When to go

June to September; the Agawa Rock ledge closes in wind and high water, which is common. Autumn colour along the highway is exceptional. The park closes for winter.

Before you go

The pictograph ledge is slippery, sloping and directly above deep cold water; people have gone in. It closes without notice in rough conditions. Superior weather changes fast.

Nearby

The Agawa Canyon train runs from Sault Ste. Marie; Pukaskwa lies northwest.

Key facts