Last Spike at Feist Lake

Photo by contributor Trevor Eaton Cordes - Posted January, 2006

Plaque Location

The District of Kenora
The Township of Machin
At the pull-off at Little Joe Lake on the south side of Highway 17
37 km west of Vermilion Bay

Coordinates: N 49 50.810 W 93 51.480

Plaque Text

In the 1870s, Canada needed a reliable all-Canadian transportation route between Lake Superior and the western prairie territories it acquired in 1869. After promising a rail connection to British Columbia, the federal government started to build a railway between Thunder Bay and Red River in 1875. It took seven years to complete the 600 kilometre (375 mile) line. Thousands of workers battled mosquitoes and blackflies as they cut trees, blasted granite, bridged chasms and filled in muskeg. On June 19, 1882, the last spike was driven just south of here near Feist lake. The line was transferred to the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway, which delivered the first shipment of western grain to Thunder bay in the fall of 1883.

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Posted June 26, 2011
it is a sad state of affairs that people in the Dryden, Vermilion Bay and Kenora area are unaware that history was made by the driving of the last spike on the CPR connecting Manitoba to the Lakehead...We, the members of the Lake of the Woods Railroad Museum are doing our best to educate the people as to what transpired at Feist Lake..an open invitation to you to visit our museum..you will be pleasantly surprised.....Bill Pendrick,Treasurer CP Retiree Club..Kenora, Ont.

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