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Dog River

Formally known as the University River.

Details

Date Added to Canadian Geographical Names Database:
August 20, 1991?This is the date when the Government officially recognized the name. More Info

Notes

Biologist and geologist, Louis Agassiz camped at the Dog River in 1848 on his way from Sault Ste. Marie to Thunder Bay. He described Dog River: "At several places we observed terraces, and carried two of them, at various heights, but preserving their relative positions, about two miles, to the Riv. a la Chienne [Dog], where they turned up the valley and extended along its left bank as far as we could see, having an elevation of about two hundred feet. Here, according to intention, we encamped at sunset, fifteen miles from our starting place. This river is deep, and about ten fathoms wide, umber-colored as usual, with a broad expansion inside, which, with the wideness of the valley and the scanty growth on the terraces (doubtless of sand) forming its left bank, permitted an extensive view up the stream into an amphitheatre of high rounded hills, behind which the sun was setting. There are rapids and a fall of about ten feet a quarter of a mile up. We pitched our tents on a spit of sand, broad at the base, and running out in a point across the mouth of the stream to within a few yards of the steep rock of the right bank. Just inside the point, the bottom sunk sheer down twenty feet. Outside there is a bar, having only a few feet of water on it. One of the men collecting firewood on the bank found a bear’s skull, with two shoulder-blades and some vertebrae, stuck in the crotch of a tree. The jaws were very neatly bound together with watiap, and the bones painted with broad stripes of black and vermillion. Inside of the skull was some tobacco, plugged in with birch bark. This is said to be a common token of an Indian grave, marking the dead as a brave hunter. On the bank above were remains of an Indian lodge."

Sources and Further Learning