Lake · Canada
Lake Nipigon
Lake Nipigon is the largest lake that lies completely inside the Canadian province of Ontario. Its water flows down the Nipigon River into Lake Superior, so it is part of the Great Lakes' water system.
Picture credit: P199 (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Lake Nipigon?
Countries on its shores: Canada.
Middle of the lake: 49.82° N, 88.52° W
The story behind it
Lake Nipigon is deep and wild. At its deepest point it goes down about 165 m, and its shoreline winds for more than 1 000 km around bays and islands. The biggest islands have names like Caribou Island, Kelvin Island and Shakespeare Island. Along parts of the shore, cliffs rise 150 to 200 m high. They formed from hot, melted rock that squeezed between layers of stone long ago and then hardened. During the ice ages, glaciers scraped out the lake's basin again and again. As the last ice age was ending, water from the giant Lake Agassiz sometimes flowed through Lake Nipigon. Several First Nations communities live near the lake today. On the north shore, a park protects a place where woodland caribou travel and spend the winter.
Find it on the globe
Lake Nipigon is there as a small blue dot with its name, right on the water. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How big is Lake Nipigon?
Lake Nipigon covers about 4 850 km². That makes it about the 30th-largest lake in the world and the largest lake lying completely inside Ontario.
What does the name Nipigon mean?
The lake's Ojibwe name, Animbiigoo-zaaga'igan, may come from a word meaning 'at waters that extend over the horizon'. Several First Nations communities still live near the lake.
Where does the water of Lake Nipigon go?
It flows out through the Nipigon River into Lake Superior. So water from Lake Nipigon becomes part of the Great Lakes.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
Last checked: