Red Squirrel Road, also called the Red Squirrel logging road and formerly called the Johns-Manville Road, is a

logging road A gravel road is a type of unpaved road surfaced with gravel that has been brought to the site from a quarry or stream bed. They are common in less-developed nations, and also in the rural areas of developed nations such as Canada and the Unite ...

located within the Municipality of

Temagami Temagami, formerly spelled as Timagami, is a municipality in northeastern Ontario, Canada, in the Nipissing District with Lake Temagami at its heart. The Temagami region is known as ''n'Daki Menan'', the homeland of the area's First Nations commu ...

Nipissing District Nipissing District is a district in Northeastern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario. It was created in 1858. The district seat is North Bay. In 2016, the population was 83,150. The land area is ; the population density was , making it o ...

Northeastern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. It runs from Whitefish Bay on

Lake Temagami Lake Temagami, formerly spelled as Lake Timagami, is a lake in Nipissing District in northeastern Ontario, Canada, situated approximately 80 km north of North Bay. The lake's name comes from ''dimii-agamiing'' "tih-MEE-uh-guh-MEENG", which me ...

Ontario Highway 11 King's Highway 11, commonly referred to as Highway 11, is a Ontario Provincial Highway Network, provincially maintained highway in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. At , it is the second longest highway in the ...

at the community of Owaissa.

History

Red Squirrel Road was originally created in 1965 by the

Johns-Manville Johns Manville is an American company based in Denver, Colorado, that manufactures insulation, roofing materials and engineered products. For much of the 20th century, the then-titled Johns-Manville Corporation was the global leader in the ma ...

company to log

jack pine Jack pine (''Pinus banksiana'') is an eastern North American pine. Its native range in Canada is east of the Rocky Mountains from the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories to Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, and the north-central and ...

on the sand flats just north of

Ferguson Bay Ferguson Bay is a small inlet on the eastern south coast of Southern Thule isle of Morrell. It is in effect the only safe anchorage on Southern Thule. It was here that the Argentine Air Force set up the '' Corbeta Uruguay'' base, starting an oc ...

at the northern end of

. As the flats were cleared the logged jack pine was towed down Red Squirrel Road towards Highway 11. During 1970, Red Squirrel Road became longer to log the jack pine through the Sharp Rock Portage near Diamond Lake. Red Squirrel Road became abandoned to the public until around 1972 and subsequently, the road has been used by the public. In 1985, plans were broadcast to expand Red Squirrel Road and this became a rallying point for environmental preservation. In 1988, the

Ontario Minister of Natural Resources The Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry is a government ministry of the Canadian province of Ontario that is responsible for Ontario's provincial parks, forests, fisheries, wildlife, mineral aggregates and the Crown land ...

Vince Kerrio Vincent George Kerrio (February 5, 1924 – October 30, 2009) was a businessperson and politician in Ontario, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as a Liberal from 1975 to 1990, and was a cabinet minister in the government ...

approved the expansion of the Red Squirrel logging road, directly through

Anishnabe The Anishinaabeg (adjectival: Anishinaabe) are a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples present in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States. They include the Ojibwe (including Saulteaux and Oji-Cree), Odawa, Potawatomi, ...

territory. This prompted a series of roadblocks by the

Teme-Augama Anishnabai The Teme-Augama Anishnabai (from the Anishinaabe ''Dimii'aagamaa Anishinaabe'', "the deep water people") is the Indigenous Anishinaabe community of the Temagami First Nation. The Teme-Augama Anishnabai have trapped and hunted animals in the Temag ...

and by environmentalists from 1988 to 1989.

References

Roads in Nipissing District Transport in Temagami {{Ontario-road-stub