What's Hiding on Lake of the Woods? POW Camps, Steamboats & More

Two miles from Wiley Point Wilderness Lodge, there's a point on Lake of the Woods where German prisoners of war once lived, logged and raced homemade kayaks. 🌲 Lake of the Woods has over 14,000 islands, and some of them hold more history than you'd think. In this video we head out by boat from Wiley Point to explore the landmarks hiding in our own backyard: • POW Camp 61 at Oak Point, one of six German prisoner of war logging camps on the lake from 1943 to 1946. No fences, no barbed wire, just the lake. • The steamboat era, including the Edna Brydges, a 75 foot steamer launched in 1895 that once carried passengers and supplies between Rat Portage and Whitefish Bay. • The Keenora and the Rainy River Navigation Company, when steamers were the only highway on the lake. • The relics still out there today, from an old Kendall oil can to the stories our guides have been passing down for years. Want to see it for yourself? Wiley Point Wilderness Lodge is boat-access only, right in the heart of Lake of the Woods. 📞 1-807-789-3653 📧 reservations@totemresorts.com 🌐 www.totemresorts.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PHOTO & ARCHIVE CREDITS The Muse, Lake of the Woods Museum (Kenora, ON) Edna Brydges steamboat photo (973.18.5), the Clipper, the Rat Portage boat yard, and Camp 61 photos https://themusekenora.ca Dr. Michael O'Hagan, O'Hagan Collection Camp 61 (Oak Bay) photos and research from "Bears, Black Flies, and the Bush: POWs and the Lake of the Woods" https://powsincanada.ca Talk:    • Bears, Black Flies, and the Bush: POWs and...   Canadian War Museum Camp 61 POW photo Archives of Ontario SS Keenora photos, Rainy River Navigation Company (via Wikimedia Commons) Natural Resources Canada, Toporama Maps. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence (Canada). Krystal's Curios Kendall oil can image https://www.ebay.com/itm/404816353316 Scotian Shores (Nova Scotia) Listerine bottle image Historical sources German POW Camps, Township of Sioux Narrows (Pinetree Line archive) Lake of the Woods Museum newsletter, "Spring Break-Up" by Lori Nelson ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ MUSIC "Lasting Hope" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... "Back Porch Acoustic Guitar" by Musictown from Pixabay "Cinematic Rural Folk Background Music for Documentary" by DesiFreeMusic from Pixabay "History Documentary" by The_Mountain from Pixabay #lakeofthewoods #canadianhistory #sunsetcountry