When standing on Tower Peak, you can feel the almost unrelenting wind as it rattles the relic fire tower. The summit, or Tower Peak, is the highest elevation in Ontario. (The north peak is the third highest and the south peak the fifth.) There is no higher point of land for 525 kilometres (326 miles) to the south, 380 kilometres (236 miles)  to the east, 1,430 kilometres (890 miles) to the west, and 1,600 kilometres (994 miles) to the north, above the Arctic Circle.

Getting there is not so straightforward. Almost everyone travels by canoe. Ken Takabe, trekking to the highest points of every province, got there overland in 2001.

                  Overland to Ishpatina

The fire tower, abandoned in the late 1960s, was built in 1930. (It is not known if the current structure is the original one.) The solo towerman spent his days fire watching from the cupola. Each morning and evening he travelled the 3.4-kilometre, 314-metre-vertical-rise trail between the tower and his cabin on the shore of Scarecrow Lake. The only contact with others was via the tower radio or, when he was lucky, with passing canoeists mostly from one of the youth camps on Lake Temagami.

Due to its prominence, lightning often strikes. Before widespread aircraft use, fire rangers had to build a trail up the north slope from Smoothwater Lake to cope with frequent fire-fighting trips from their Gowganda base.

Despite its rank as the highest peak in Ontario, the more accessible and controversial Maple Mountain is better known.

Ishpatina was only crowned in 1970 as Ontario's highest elevation when the first topographical map was published, the federal 41P/7. Other peaks were thought to be higher. There was a suggestion to call it Mount Coleman after the famed provincial geologist, but Ontario's Geographic Names Board decided to look for a local name.

ALEX BROADBENT

Looking southeast from the base of the tower, September 2003. Pojo is in the foreground.

Ethno-geographer Craig Macdonald says the Board learned that the First People called it "highest hill."  Author Basil Johnston, an Ojibway from the Wasauksing First Nation near Parry Sound, then affiliated with the Board, translated it into Ishpatina in his dialect. But in the Temagami dialect it is Ish-pud-in-nong.