Kenora - the year 2000 saw the history books rewritten for Kenora as the 3 Municipalities of Kenora, Jaffray Melick and Keewatin were amalgamated to form the new City of Kenora, with a year round population now in excess of 17,000 people.

Originally called Rat Portage, from an Indian word which means "the road to the country of the muskrat", the town became Kenora in 1905. There was increasing public pressure to change the name because even then the area was recognized as a tourist destination (and how attractive would the name "Rat Portage" sound to them?).

From it's beginnings as a Hudson's Bay fur trading post, Kenora developed into (for a time) the town with the roughest reputation in Canada. The resource-rich area drew a wide variety of pioneers and even led to a boundary dispute where, at one point, Kenora was claimed by both Manitoba and Ontario. The Kenora area has long been known to vacationers from the United States and Canada as a must see destination.

Situated on the northern most shores of beautiful Lake of the Woods, with it's 65,000 miles of shoreline and 14,000 islands, we have it all. As the largest urban area west of Lake Superior, Kenora offers you the best of both worlds - all the amenities of home with the wild and open spaces of Canada's wilderness as your personal backyard - and our backyard offers some of the finest fishing and hunting in of all Canada.

"Anicinabe" - (A-nish-i-naw-be) Ojibway, meaning "First Peoples"

In 1914 Hattie Louise Cameron became the principal owner of a parcel of land including large parts of which is now known as Kenora's Lakeside area. In 1929, with no way of knowing it would one day be seized and claimed by a group of armed Ojibwas led by a man named Louis Cameron, she sold a 14 acre piece of it to His Majesty the King through the superintendent general of Indian Affairs Canada. The land was originally purchased by Indian Affairs to provide a camping area for Indians travelling between the reserves and Kenora, specifically as a camp for those discharged from hospital to use to rest up in and gather strength for their journey home. It was used in this way until it was sold to the Town in 1959 for $1,875 and developed it into a camping park named "Anicinabe".