With world-class fishing and stunning scenery, it’s the perfect mix of relaxation and adventure. This river was the main Water Highway to the west in Canada from 1600 to the mid 1800's. The Ojibway name for the river is Wemitigoj-Sibi (French River). The early French explorers gave the river the name la Rivière des Français. The Champlain Trail is now known as the French River, or just "The French
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From the time of Étienne Brûlé, the first known European to descend its short, turbulent course from Lake Nipissing to Georgian Bay, the French River was a portal to the interior and north-west. For explorers, missionaries and fur-traders alike, it formed a vital link in the voyageur's highway which ultimately stretched 3,000 miles toward the Pacific and western Artic. On reaching the upper Great Lakes, travel routes branched off in several directions, but for considerably more than half of Canada's historical period much of the traffic to and from the west went by way of The French. As the name implies, it was the road by which the first traders from settlements on the St. Lawrence River entered the vast domain of Indian tribes who hunted the beaver they sought - and who of course revealed to them this convenient short-cut to Lake Huron. By far the greater part of the canoe traffic on the French was connected with the fur trade. Beginning before 1650, it peaked around 1800 when brigades of birch bark craft, up to thirty-six feet long and carrying three tons, passed regularly, going west in the spring and returning to Montreal in late summer and autumn.