Pulling at a rope submerged below the mysterious depths of northwestern Ontario’s Lake Nipigon, research scientists are trying to free a coring device that’s suctioned into the lake bottom.
Sedimentary core samples such as the one just brought aboard are tangible evidence of the devastation Lake Nipigon survived 70 years earlier after hydroelectric diversion dams were built, leading to concerns about methyl mercury in the abundant fish population. Along with core samples from the sediments, the Guardians program – which provides federal funding to support Indigenous stewardship over land, water and ice – is gathering data on Lake Nipigon to illustrate what, until lately, has only ever been oral history.
In the 1950s, the Army Corps of Engineers, in an effort to raise the hydroelectric potential of the Great Lakes, built two diversion dams that would transport water from the north flowing Ogoki River watershed into Lake Superior.