truenorth
Member
Post Number: 7
Registered: 07-2009
| | Posted on Monday, April 18, 2022 - 4:39 pm: | 
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Both times that I’ve paddled up the Montreal River’s to Lady Dufferin Lake on the way to the river’s east branch headwaters in Smoothwater Lake and to points beyond, I’ve wondered what Lady Dufferin would have thought had she seen the inconsequential, marsh-lined and not terribly scenic widening of the river that someone decided her name should grace.
As I would find out, it is actually not the lake that he had given the name to! The much larger and definitely more scenic lake that he named Lady Dufferin was about twenty kilometres downriver!
The lake that Robert Bell labelled Lady Dufferin in his notes was the one we know as Gowganda Lake!
Here is what he wrote in his report:
"Fifteen or sixteen miles, in a straight line, below White Beaver Lake, the east branch of the Montreal River falls into a very beautiful shaped expansion, about three miles long, which I named Lady Dufferin Lake. The river enters the southern arm of this lake. About, one mile and a half above the entrance there is a portage, a quarter of a mile lone: and 300 yards above this, another of the same length."
See here for a more complete report on what Bell had in mind, as well as a map, check out the following -
https://albinger.me/2022/02/17/robert-bells-lady-d ufferin-lakeits-not-where-you-think-it-is/
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