Beaches on the shores of Lake Agassiz

Imagine living beneath 213 metres (650 feet) of frigid lake water. If the city of Winnipeg – less than 90 minutes south of Red Rock Ranch in Oak Point, Manitoba – had existed 9,500 years ago, residents would have found themselves that far beneath the surface of Lake Agassiz, which covered 90% of Manitoba and Northern Ontario, along with parts of North Dakota and Minnesota. Agassiz actually was the meltwater from the Agassiz glacier, which dominated the geography of North America during the last Ice Age. Evidence of this massive event abounds throughout Manitoba’s Interlake.

Perhaps the most pronounced of these natural “artifacts” are the three major lakes in the province: Lakes Winnipeg, Winnipegosis and Lake Manitoba.

Oak Point is a small hamlet approximately seventy miles north of Winnipeg, but a mere four miles from Lake Manitoba. Many of the local residents count on fishing – both commercial and recreational – to supplement their farming incomes. These include a small number of non-Metis, non-First Nations fishers. 

As Agassiz’ glaciers (up to four kilometers, or 2.5 miles deep at times) retreated, the land, which had been depressed by the enormous weight of the ice sheet or scoured and scraped down to bedrock, developed pockets in which some of the melting waters remained. Fed by rivers from the west, east and south, the three Manitoba lakes were formed. Today, the three lakes drain, ultimately, to the north, in the direction of the retreated ice sheet. Indeed, Agassiz left an important legacy for the province, as almost all of the electrical power that the province generates and sells to its neighbours comes from hydroelectric power, generated on rivers that feed into or drain the lakes, and, in particular, Lake Winnipeg.

But Lake Manitoba offers a challenge. Shallow – at its deepest it is only 23 feet – the lake freezes deep in winter. However, with only nominal outlet drainage, flooding is a concern. In the spring of 2011, excessive moisture flowing in could not be vacated quickly enough and hundreds of homes and cottages were lost. Each year, west and northwest winds threaten the southeast beaches in the fall, and, regularly, mounds of ice, like land borne icebergs, pile up on those east sandy shores. It is not uncommon to see twenty-foot frozen mounds well into late April and early May.

Cottagers, though, see the miles of sandy shores and forgive the lake for its nastier wintry side. And its shallow lines mean that the beaches extend hundreds of meters into the lake. It is not uncommon to see children wading in waist-deep water nearly a quarter of a mile from shore.

Oddly, both Lake Winnipegosis (57 feet) and Lake Winnipeg (116 feet)  are deeper than Lake Manitoba, yet it is Lake Manitoba where folk tales claim that the province’s version of the Loch Ness monster, Manipogo, lives. Perhaps it is the unpredictable behavior of the lake, driven by winds from the west and north, that stir up odd, unexplained events. Or it could be the spiritual nature of the half dozen First Nations reserves that rub shoulders with the lake. Or even the untamed wilderness that surrounds the lakes northern shores. Whatever the explanation, Lake Manitoba, born in our last Ice Age, holds many stories, some of which are yet to be told. The tales are not frozen in the eons-old ice, but are fluid, evolving and waiting to be heard.