Nemiscau (or Old Nemaska) is a semi-permanent Cree settlement in northern Quebec, Canada, on Lake Nemiscau. During the mid-twentieth century, Thomas Nelson Dodd Jr., PhD, an American professor of chemistry from St. Peter's College in New Jersey, encountered the Cree people living at Nemiscau as he was canoeing in the nearby waterways. He developed a friendship with the people, and returned every summer as a kind of one-man peace corps. During his years with the Cree, he documented their spoken dialect which had never been written, as well as their customs and habits. He persuaded the Canadian government to build modern housing for the Crees, and Dr. Dodd's work was substantial enough to merit a federal grant of $15,000 from the American Philosophic Society in 1961. Dr. Dodd returned to Nemiscau every summer until July 1965, when he perished in a plane crash en route to Nemiscau. Nemiscau is the former site of a

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business di ...

post until 1970. The settlement was abandoned in the mid 1970s when Hydro-Québec proposed hydro-electric development on the

Rupert River The Rupert River is one of the largest rivers in Quebec, Canada. From its headwaters in Lake Mistassini, the largest natural lake in Quebec, it flows west into Rupert Bay on James Bay. The Rupert drains an area of . There is some extremely la ...

, which would have resulted in the flooding of the area. Its residents were dispersed to

Waskaganish Waskaganish ( cr, ᐙᔅᑳᐦᐄᑲᓂᔥ/Wâskâhîkaniš, Little House; ) is a Cree community of over 2,500 people at the mouth of the Rupert River on the south-east shore of James Bay in Northern Quebec, Canada. Waskaganish is part of the ...

and Mistissini until the new community of Nemaska was built. Since the development plans have been canceled, the Cree originally living here have started to return to Nemiscau, using it as a summer encampment. There are only a handful of year-round residents in Nemiscau.

Climate

Nemiscau has a

warm-summer humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and freezing ...

(

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, notabl ...

Dfb) with mild to warm summers with cool nights and freezing cold winters lasting half the year.

External links

*http://www.ottertooth.com/Native_K/nemaska.htm *http://www.nemaska.com Cree villages in Quebec Hudson's Bay Company trading posts {{Quebec-geo-stub