page_title: Kenora
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Kenora / History
caption_attribution_description: English: „Husky the Muskie“, mascot of Kenora, Ontario.
context_page_description: Kenora, originally named Rat Portage, is a small city situated on the Lake of the Woods in Northwestern Ontario, Canada, close to the Manitoba boundary, and about 200 km east of Winnipeg. It is the seat of Kenora District.
  The town of Rat Portage was renamed in 1905 by using the first two letters of itself and the neighboring towns of Keewatin and Norman to form the present-day City of Kenora. In 2001, the towns of Kenora and Keewatin as well as the unincorporated communities of Norman and Jaffray Melick amalgamated under the Municipal Act, 2001.
  Kenora is the administrative headquarters of the Anishinabe of Wauzhushk Onigum, Obashkaandagaang Bay, and Washagamis Bay First Nations band governments.
context_section_description: Kenora's future site was in the territory of the Ojibway when the first European, Jacques de Noyon, sighted Lake of the Woods in 1688.
  Pierre de La Vérendrye established a secure French trading post, Fort Saint Charles, to the south of present-day Kenora near the current Canada/U.S. border in 1732, and France maintained the post until 1763 when it lost the territory to the British in the Seven Years' War. Until then, it was the most northwesterly settlement of New France. In 1836 the Hudson's Bay Company established a post on Old Fort Island, and in 1861, the Company opened a post on the mainland at Kenora's current location.
  In 1878, the company surveyed lots for the permanent settlement of Rat Portage ("portage to the country of the muskrat") — the community kept that name until 1905, when it was renamed Kenora.
  Kenora was once claimed as part of the Province of Manitoba, and there are early references to Rat Portage, Manitoba. There was a long lasting argument between the two provinces known as the Ontario-Manitoba boundary dispute. Each province claimed the town as part of their territory and the dispute lasted from 1870 to 1884. Although Ottawa had ruled the town part of Manitoba in 1881, the issue was finally taken up with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council which eventually decided in Ontario's favour. Kenora officially became part of the province of Ontario in 1889. Boundaries were drawn up for the provinces and the Northwest Angle on Lake of the Woods which definitively drew the borders between Ontario, Manitoba, Canada, and Minnesota, U.S.
  Gold and the railway were both important in the community's early history: gold was first discovered in the area in 1850, and by 1893, 20 mines were operating within 24 km (15 mi) of Rat Portage, and the first Canadian ocean-to-ocean train passed through in 1886 on the Canadian Pacific Railway. Among the entrepreneurs attracted to the town was the Hon. JEP Vereker, a retired British army officer and youngest son of the 4th Viscount Gort.
  Later, a highway was built through Kenora in 1932, becoming part of Canada's first coast-to-coast highway in 1943, and then part of the Trans-Canada Highway, placing the community on both of Canada's major transcontinental transportation routes. The original barrier to the completion of the highway concerned the crossing of the Winnipeg River at two locations. The single span arch bridges are among the longest of their type in North America.
  During the Prohibition era in the United States, the Lake of the Woods served as a smuggler's route for the transport of alcohol.
  In December 1883, there was a large fire in Rat Portage, rendering 70 of the town's then population of 700 homeless.
  The Stanley Cup was won by the Kenora Thistles hockey team in 1907. The team featured such Hall of Famers as Billy McGimsie, Tommy Phillips, and Art Ross, for whom the Art Ross Trophy is named. Kenora is the smallest town to have won a major North American sports title.
  Rat Portage is mentioned in Algernon Blackwood's famous 1910 story, "The Wendigo".
  In 1967, the year of the Canadian Centennial, Kenora erected a sculpture known as Husky the Muskie. It has become the town's mascot and one of its most recognizable features.
  A dramatic bank robbery took place in Kenora on May 10, 1973. An unknown man entered the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce heavily armed and wearing a "dead man's switch", a device utilising a clothespin, wires, battery and dynamite, where the user holds the clothespin in the mouth, exerting force on the clothespin. Should the user release the clothespin, two wires attached to both sides of the pin complete an electrical circuit, sending current from the battery, detonating the explosives. After robbing the bank, the robber exited the CIBC, and was preparing to enter a city vehicle driven by undercover police officer Don Milliard. A sniper, Robert Letain, positioned across the street, shot the robber, causing the explosives to detonate and kill the robber. Most of the windows on the shops on the main street were shattered as a result o
caption: Husky the Muskie
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