“This is called 'The Bluewater Country,' and certainly the waters of Lake Huron are amazingly blue, every shade from robin’s egg to ultramarine, with a touch of cobalt and a dash of navy. Its fascinating colour is its greatest charm.”
– John and Marjorie Mackenzie, Ontario in Your Car, 1950
The pristine blue waters of Lake Huron were called Gichi-aazhoogami-gichigami, or “great crossway sea,” by the Ojibwe — appropriate, given its role as a crossroads for Lakes Michigan and Superior. The lake was also a crossroads for Indigenous confederacies and nations. By the 17th century, it had become the site of conflict between Algonquin and Iroquois groups. Agrarian settlements emerged in areas like the modern Huronia region of Ontario; they were occupied on 10-to-20-year cycles based on soil fertility. Among the peoples who lived along Huron’s shores were the Fox, Huron Wendat, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Sauk.
When Samuel de Champlain arrived on the south shore of Georgian Bay in 1615, he dubbed the lake La Mer Douce (“the gentle sea”). In 1639, a French Jesuit mission was established at Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons, where co-operation with the Huron Wendat allowed the priests to create a self-sufficient community far from the rest of New France. After a decade, attacks by rival Iroquois nations prompted residents to burn down the mission. The ruins lay undisturbed for nearly 300 years.
Vegetable garden at Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons. (P199/Wikimedia)
Huron’s 59,600 square kilometres make it the second-largest Great Lake and the fifth-largest freshwater lake in the world. It boasts the most shoreline (6,157 kilometres, including over 30,000 islands) and largest bay (Georgian), as well as the world’s largest freshwater island (Manitoulin). Water flows in from Lake Superior via the St. Mary’s River and Lake Michigan and flows out to Lake Erie via the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, and the Detroit River. On average, it runs 59 metres deep.
What exactly constitutes Huron is a subject of longstanding disagreement. Some explorers thought of Georgian Bay, which is separated by the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island, as a lake on its own. Modern hydrologists consider Lake Huron and Lake Michigan one body of water, as they are separated by a strait instead of a river.
Satellite image of Lake Huron collected on May 1, 2016, by Landsat 8 satellite. (Universal Images Group/CP)
The lake is bordered by Ontario to the east and north, and Michigan to the west. Its largest city is Sarnia, (72,047), followed by Port Huron, Michigan (28,983), and Collingwood (24,811). Overall, the Lake Huron basin is home to 3 million people, split evenly between Canada and the United States. At its south end, the Bluewater Bridge links its two largest municipalities and connects the busy trade corridors of Interstates 69 and 94 with Ontario Highway 402.
About 68 per cent of the Huron basin is forested, containing trees such as ash, aspen, birch, cedar, cottonwood, and maple. Wildlife includes cormorants, ducks, great blue herons, and gulls. Manitoulin Island is home to 1,200 of Canada’s 5,000 vascular plant species. Around 90 species of fish reside in the lake, including carp, cisco, northern pike, smallmouth bass, trout, walleye, and whitefish. As with Superior, the north end of Huron experienced a mineral boom in the 1840s when copper was found at Bruce Mines, though most mining activity eventually moved further inland, toward Sudbury. The world’s largest underground salt mine is found in Goderich, running 548 metres (1,800 feet) beneath the lake.
The Sifto salt mine, in Goderich. (Dave Chidley/CP)
Huron has long been known for its shipwrecks. It’s possible it was the site of the first significant one to occur in the Great Lakes after Europeans arrived. Explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, commissioned the construction of Le Griffon as a fur trading and supply vessel. Constructed near present-day Niagara Falls, New York, over the first half of 1679, it met its doom somewhere in Lake Huron that fall. Theories about its sinking range from a violent storm to destruction by rival fur traders or local Indigenous people. It became a “holy grail” for shipwreck hunters, leading to numerous claims of its discovery at sites ranging from the northwest end of Lake Michigan to the western end of Manitoulin Island. (Nobody has yet conclusively proven that it has been found.)
The number of shipwrecks in Huron has resulted in the creation of five bottomland preserves in Michigan (DeTour Passage, Sanilac Shores, Straits of Mackinac, Thumb Area, Thunder Bay). On the Ontario side, Fathom Five, an area off the north end of the Bruce Peninsula near Tobermory, became Canada’s first National Marine Park in 1987. Besides offering divers plenty to explore, the park is also known for its “flowerpots,” tall towers of dolemite whose unusual shapes were carved out by changing lake levels. The dolemite is the result of magnesium combining with the remains of prehistoric coral reefs.
Ships and Shipwrecks | Great Lakes Now
The blue waters have helped Huron develop a thriving tourism industry. In the north, Mackinac Island was originally an Indigenous settlement. During the Revolutionary War, it was the site of a British fort, and in the Victorian era, it became a summer resort. Today, the island includes M-185, the only Michigan state highway where motorized vehicles are banned. (It also lends its name to the fudge found in every touristy site across the state.) On the Canadian side, Manitoulin Island developed into a destination for travellers catching the Chi-Cheemaun ferry from Tobermory. Partying crowds descend on beaches from Grand Bend to Wasaga on hot summer days, and cottagers try to find rest and relaxation along the Bruce Peninsula and all along Georgian Bay.
Megan Leslie, CEO of World Wildlife Canada, on Lake Huron.
But Mother Nature isn’t as restful. Winter brings lake-effect snowstorms and squalls that reach deep into western Ontario, producing treacherous driving conditions. One of the deadliest weather events ever experienced across the Great Lakes was the Great Storm of 1913: two storms combined over five November days to produce hail, sleet, snow, and hurricane-strength winds. It hit Lake Huron particularly hard; eight freighters were lost, killing around 200 people. For days afterwards, bodies washed up in Goderich — five of them were buried under a tombstone that simply reads “sailors.”