Epoxy

Chiblow Lake

Iron Bridge, Ontario, Canada

Also known as Little Chiblow Lake, Iron Bridge, Blind River, Algoma District

Chiblow is a family name here, and it belongs to the people who now own the lodge on this lake.

Chiblow Lake Lodge opened in 1936 as Biltons Lodge. It is now owned and operated by Mississauga First Nation, whose reserve sits at the mouth of the Mississagi River to the south, at Blind River. The community's own name for itself is Misswezahging, from an Anishinaabe word meaning a river with many outlets, which describes the delta the Mississagi builds where it reaches Lake Huron.

The First Nation is a signatory to the Robinson Huron Treaty of 1850, and its traditional territory runs the length of the Mississagi and out across the Huron watershed, far beyond the reserve boundary.

Water reaches this lake from Little Chiblow Lake at the west end and from the Blind River at the east, and leaves over a dam at the south. Two dams on the Blind River are the subject of a flooding claim filed in 1996 that remains open.

Details

Feature: Lake
Build: Epoxy
Material: Solid Cherry
Colour: Caribbean Blue
Size: 10-1/2" x 16"
Completed: June 2025

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

Detail of the Chiblow Lake map by Keyway

How this one was made

Cherry, inset, with a black double border and corner flourishes. That corner detail is finer work than a plain border, because each curve is a separate short run rather than one long straight one.

Chiblow is two bodies rather than one. A smaller lake at the west, then a thin neck, then the main body opening east across most of the board. That neck is the awkward part, since the dam lines from both sides run close enough together there to be most of the channel.

The main body is broken up throughout. Bays folding back on themselves, points running out into the water, and several islands ringed completely, some down to a couple of millimetres of cherry.

Two colours, the water and the black, plus the red heart. The heart sits on its own at the neck and is small enough to be a syringe fill by itself.