A History of Lake Temagami's Sandy Inlet and Wanapitei
1891 to 1986

Bruce Hodgins, 1986

Chapter I

Euro-Canadian settlement at the site of Wanapitei at Sandy Inlet on Lake Temagami, goes back to the 1890s and the retreat established by Father Charles Paradis. Born in Kamouraska in 1848, Paradis went on to study theology and teach art and art history at Ottawa College. he also went to Rome to further his studies in Theology and Art. In 1881 he entered the priesthood and the Ovlate Order, only a year after undertaking his first canoe trip up from Mattawa to Lake Temagami ( in Ojibwa, Teme-Augaming or "Place of Deep Water), a trip which was probably the first recreational voyage to the area. He visited the Hudson's Bay Post on Bear Island, where many of the Teme-Augama Anishanabai gathered in the summer. Paradis canoed as far north on the lake as Rabbit Nose, where he and his clerical colleagues camped. He was never to lose his love for the lake and its wilderness beauty.

As an Oblate Paradis served at the mission Lake Temiskaming (from where in 1882 he canoed down the Abitibi and along James Bay to Fort Albany) and a t a mission on the upper Gatineau. Quickly his fame as a colonizer grew until he became the most noted disciple of Father Antoine Labelle, "le roi du nord." Wherever he went, however, he ran afoul of the authorities - political., business, and clerical. He took a lumber company to court for cheating settlers of their timber and successfully carried the case to the Supreme Court of Canada and the Judicial Committee of the the Privy Council in London. Yet he was expelled from the Oblates when he refused to recant his allegation that he had been offered a bribe by the Premier of Quebec to abandon the suit. After losing two appeals in Rome, in 1891, Paradis secured permission from the Bishop of Peterborough to act as a colonizing priest and missionary in the area of Lake Temagami and the Montreal, Sturgeon and Veuve Rivers.

It was probably in that year that he first canoed to Sandy Inlet and decided that ultimately he would establish there his wilderness manor farm, court and chapel, his Mission du Scare Coeur. Here, where the small Anima Nipissing or Red Squirrel River enters the lake, lay a flat sandy-soiled area abounding in jack pine and surrounded by high rocky hills. Traditionally, members of the Teme-Augama Anishanabai had camped at the northwest end of the long sand beach, by the rocky point past the Eagle River, especially in winter when they trapped. Other fur-laden Indians from the headwaters of the Anima Nipissing, would camp on the beach in early May, waiting for the break-up before heading south to the post at Bear Island. It was here, by the mouth of the Red Squirrel River, that Paradis dreamed of creating a tiny capital for a virtual French-speaking "province within a province..." To do so, he would have to bring settlers to the outlying fertile valleys, both of the Veuve and Sturgeon Rivers, sixty miles to the south bear the Canadian Pacific Railway, and also of the Montreal River, 40 miles to the north near the projected Temiskaming railway.

Paradis set up a small retreat on Sandy Inlet around 1891 but from then to 1905, he spent most of his time at the Domremy mission, which he established near Verner on the Veuve River. During this time, he brought thousands of French-speaking colons to settle the southern part of "his" territory many of whom had been temporarily residing in Michigan. He would travel back and forth to Lake Temagami by canoe and snowshoe.

At one time he dreamed of constructing an electric railway to connect his mission to the lake. For some time he had a CPR pass, was on the payroll of the federal Department of the Interior and received support from major colonization societies in Ottawa and Montreal. But always, he found himself enmeshed in quarrels with those of lesser visions who were in power, especially the sedentary parish priests. Ultimately, his support was cut off.

After 1905, Paradis took up permanent residence at Sandy Inlet where he and his assistants cleared about 100 acres and drained the land with ditches. The farm, which he ran more or less like a little theocracy, was maintained as a half-way home for Franco-Ontarian orphaned boys. Here he grew potatoes and other vegetables, kept cattle and pigs and yet still found time to prospect for gold throughout the Nighthawk-Porcupine area to the north.

Lake Temagami did not develop as Paradis had expected. In 1901, an Ontario order-in-council established the Temagami Forest Reserve of 2,200 square miles to eliminate pressures of settlement. With its rich stands of red and white pine, the Forest was dedicated to "proper" forest management and the latest conservation practices and secondarily to recreation. In 1903 a further 1,500 square miles were added to the Temagami Forest and, within two years, steamboats were cruising the deep wilderness of the lake. That same year, the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway passed by the Northeast Arm of Lake Temagami on its way to Cobalt to fulfill Toronto's dream and vision of acquiring wealth from a boom in northern mining. Immediately a little village sprang up beside the train station, soon followed by a handful of hotels, youth camps and cottages which dotted the shoreline of Lake Temagami's islands. This was the great prewar boom, when Grey Owl, still known as the Englishman, Archie Belaney, first obtained a job at Temagami Lodge and learned to speak Ojibwa.

Paradis continued to "squat" at Sandy Inlet. Often he would celebrate the Sunday mass at Bear Island; soon he was supplying potatoes and other vegetables to the island cottagers in the central part of the lake. In 1924, when Paradis was off on a mission, a mysterious fire (perhaps set by some of his boys), burned most of his buildings, many of his own watercolors, his art treasures from Italy and an almost completed Ojibwa-French dictionary. Old and disheartened, Paradis moved first to Bear Island and then to Montreal where he died in 1926.

The site lay vacant for six years. When Stanley and Laura Belle Hodgins briefly camped there in the summer of 1930, a row of charred and decaying cabins pierced through the unmowed grass, while out on the rocky point by the mouth of the Red Squirrel River, Paradis' tall wooden cross still stood defiant, as a testimonial to a faded dream. Today at Camp Wanapitei, many of the Paradis ruins and artifacts remain. On the hill behind the Chateau are the remnants of his chapel, and near Sangego, the ruins of the blacksmith's shop and fruit- cellar. The walls of the hospital are those of an old Paradis cabin and, until recently, his old icehouse was still used for its original purpose. Some of the farm implements have been collected and are now on display behind the Red Squirrel Cabin, while the horizontal bar of his old cross is mounted in the dining hall.