Lake Simcoe

Lake Simcoe is a lake in southern Ontario, Canada, the fourth-largest lake wholly in the province, after Lake Nipigon, Lac Seul, and Lake Nipissing. At the time of the first European contact in the 17th century the lake was called Ouentironk ("Beautiful Water") by the native Wendat/Ouendat (Huron) people. It was also known as Lake Taronto until it was renamed by John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, in memory of his father, Captain John Simcoe of the Royal Navy. In Anishinaabemowin, the ancestral language of the First Nations living around this lake, namely Anishinaabek of Rama and Georgina Island First Nations, Lake Simcoe is called Zhooniyaang-zaaga'igan, meaning "Silver Lake". Lake Simcoe's name was given by John Graves Simcoe in 1793 in memory of his father, Captain John Simcoe. Captain Simcoe was born on 28 November 1710, in Staindrop, in County Durham, northeast England, and served as an officer in the Royal Navy, dying of pneumonia aboard his ship, HMS Pembroke, on 15 May 1759. Historically, at the time of the first European contact in the 17th century, the lake was called Ouentironk ("Beautiful Water") by the Wyandot (Huron) natives; The Wyandot name for the lake was rendered as Wentaron in European sources up until the 20th century. A 1675 map by Pierre Raffeix referred to the lake with the French term Lac Taronto and a 1687 map by Lahontan called it Lake Taronto, while the name Tarontos Lac appeared on a 1678 map of New France by cartographer Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin. The term Taranto refers to an Iroquoian expression meaning gateway or pass. Taronto had originally referred to The Narrows, a channel of water through which Lake Simcoe discharges into Lake Couchiching. (Natural Resources Canada gives a related translation: "it originated as the Mohawk phrase tkaronto, which means "where there are trees standing in the water". According to several Mohawk speakers and aboriginal language expert John Steckley. Mohawks used the phrase to describe The Narrows, where Hurons and other natives drove stakes into the water to create fish weirs.