Exploring Black Island

Black Island sits to the west and north of Hecla Island between the south and north basins of mightly Lake Winnipeg. It's accessible only by boat (or snowshoe, snowmobile, Bombardier, airplane or foot in winter). Black is a huge chunk of land with a robust history as a sacred place for our First Peoples. The shoreline holds several bays with white sand beaches that quickly give way to the towering evergreens that sprout from the Canadian Sheild.

One bay included a beaver dam just slighly inland. The tracks leading in and out of the watering hole were almost too numerous to decifer. In a spot nearly, I saw timber wolf prints as big as my hand and moose tracks as big as my foot.

How big is Lake Winnipeg? If you look on the Manitoba highway map, the distance to travel from our spot on Black Island to Punk Island (just off the north tip of Hecla) is about four millimetres. It took us a full 30 minutes in calm water with the 55 Evinrude at full throttle to reach Punk.