Whiteshell Provincial Park

The Whiteshell sits on the western edge of the Canadian Shield, granite outcrop, jack pine and hundreds of lakes, and it holds one of the most significant concentrations of petroforms in North America: figures of snakes, turtles, fish and human forms laid out in boulders on bare rock at Bannock Point and elsewhere, made by Anishinaabe people over a long period and still used for ceremony. They are teaching sites rather than art, and visitors are asked to walk the perimeter, leave the stones untouched and not treat them as a photo backdrop. The park also has the Alfred Hole Goose Sanctuary and a Shield hiking network.

History

For thousands of years the Ojibway and earlier peoples harvested wild rice, hunted, fished, traded and held ceremonies here, and the park takes its name from the cowrie shells used in Anishinaabe ceremonies, among them those of the Midewiwin; copper trading towards Lake Superior began about 6,000 years ago. La Vérendrye came through in 1734, the railways brought the first tourists after 1883 and around 1908, Brereton Lake Dominion Park was created in 1922 and became the Whiteshell Forest Reserve in 1930, and Manitoba made it a provincial park in 1961 (Wikipedia, Whiteshell Provincial Park).

What you'll find

• The petroforms - boulder figures on bare granite at Bannock Point.
• The Shield lakes - hundreds of granite-rimmed lakes with pine and rock.
• The goose sanctuary - a Canada goose refuge founded from four orphaned goslings.
• The hiking network - Shield trails including the Hunt Lake and Pine Point routes.

When to go

June to September for canoeing and hiking; winter brings skiing and snowmobiling. Blackflies peak in June. Petroform sites are used for ceremony and may be in use.

Before you go

The petroforms are sacred sites in active use, and moving or rearranging stones is a serious offence to the communities involved. They are subtle and low, not monumental. Summer weekends fill campgrounds.

Nearby

Winnipeg lies west; the Ontario border is east.

Key facts