Qualla: Chapleau Crown Game Preserve: Where Railroads Drew the Borders of a Wilderness

Chapleau Crown Game Preserve: Where Railroads Drew the Borders of a Wilderness: Introduction

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit P199, Public domain. On a map, the Chapleau Crown Game Preserve looks like a territory drawn by a railroad engineer, because it was. The Canadian National Railway forms the northern boundary. The Canadian Pacific Railway traces the southern edge. The Algoma Central Railway runs along the west. The Chapleau River closes the box on the east. Inside these lines lie 7,000 square kilometers of boreal forest, muskeg, and lake country northeast of Lake Superior, making it the largest crown game preserve in the world. Since May 27, 1925, not a single legal shot has been fired within its borders. The preserve exists because one man from the town of Chapleau recognized that the very railways opening up Northern Ontario were also making it possible to hunt the wilderness empty.

Image: P199 | Public domain

Chapleau Crown Game Preserve: Where Railroads Drew the Borders of a Wilderness: Pictographs and Paddle Routes

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit P199, Public domain. Long before the railways arrived, this was Ojibwa and Cree homeland. The people hunted moose, trapped beaver, fished the rivers, and painted pictographs on the rock faces at Fairy Point on Missinaibi Lake, images that still testify to a deep and sustained relationship with the la...

Image: P199 | Public domain

Chapleau Crown Game Preserve: Where Railroads Drew the Borders of a Wilderness: McLeod's Alarm

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit P199, Public domain. By the early 20th century, the twin rail corridors of the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National crisscrossed the region, and a third line, the Algoma Central, ran along the western edge. The railways gave hunters, trappers, and logging operations easy access to territory that ha...

Image: P199 | Public domain

Chapleau Crown Game Preserve: Where Railroads Drew the Borders of a Wilderness: The Cost of Conservation

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit P199, Public domain. The preserve's creation came with a bitter consequence for the people who had lived there longest. Despite the treaty rights guaranteed to the Cree and Ojibwa, the hunting ban applied universally, stripping the First Nations of their subsistence lifestyle within the preserve's bo...

Image: P199 | Public domain

Chapleau Crown Game Preserve: Where Railroads Drew the Borders of a Wilderness: A Century of Rewilding

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit P199, Public domain. A hundred years of protection have produced results visible from the air. The preserve today harbors approximately 119 species of birds and 49 species of mammals. Moose browse the shorelines of hundreds of lakes. Black bear forage through blueberry patches. Timber wolves and Cana...

Image: P199 | Public domain