Rat Portage Post

Photo by Alan L Brown - July 29, 2006

Plaque Location

The District of Kenora
The City of Kenora
In the parking area of McLeod Park on the north side of Highway 17 at the east end of the first bridge west of downtown

Plaque Text

On Old Fort Island a half mile north of here, the Hudson's Bay Company erected a stockaded fur trading post about 1836. This was the first known European structure within present Kenora. In 1861 the post was moved to the mainland, where it formed the nucleus of the community of Rat Portage. Situated on the main canoe route to the West, the post was visited by many persons prominent in Canada's history, including Sir George Simpson, Sir John Henry Lefroy, Paul Kane, Captain John Palliser, Simon James Dawson and Colonel Garnet Wolseley. The post which in its later years became a general store was closed in 1918.