What is Algonquin Provincial Park?

Algonquin Provincial Park is Ontario's oldest provincial park and the largest provincial park in Ontario at 7,653 square kilometres. The park was established on May 23, 1893 (only eight years after Banff, Canada's first national park) and was the first provincial park in Ontario and the second oldest in Canada. Algonquin is in the southern Canadian Shield about 280 kilometres northeast of Toronto, with the village of Whitney just east of the park.

The park contains more than 2,400 lakes and 1,200 kilometres of streams. The southern part of the park is on the rugged Canadian Shield with rocky outcrops, mixed forest (transition between northern boreal and southern Carolinian), and many small lakes. The northern part of the park is on lower-elevation terrain with extensive bogs and beaver ponds. About 75 per cent of the park is mixed forest, with white pine, red pine, eastern hemlock, sugar maple, yellow birch, and beech the dominant species. The Madawaska, Petawawa, Bonnechere, Magnetawan, and Oxtongue Rivers all rise within the park.

Algonquin is famous for its wildlife. The park is home to Canada's largest population of moose (about 4,000), about 2,000 white-tailed deer, more than 1,000 black bears, an estimated 35 packs of eastern wolves (a population of particular conservation interest, with the eastern wolf Canis lycaon possibly a distinct species or subspecies), beaver (the park's logo), porcupine, snowshoe hare, marten, and fisher. The annual public wolf howls held in August have drawn thousands of participants since the 1960s.

The park is famous as the inspiration for Canadian artist Tom Thomson, who lived and painted in the park from 1912 until his mysterious drowning death on Canoe Lake on July 8, 1917. Thomson's paintings of Algonquin (including The Jack Pine, The West Wind, and Northern River) inspired the Group of Seven and shaped Canadian visual identity. The Algonquin Logging Museum, the Algonquin Visitor Centre, and the Algonquin Art Centre interpret the park's history and art. The park has more than 1,500 kilometres of canoe routes and 18 backcountry hiking trails. Algonquin Park is managed by Ontario Parks under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. It is the namesake but not the homeland of the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation, whose traditional territory includes much of the Ottawa River valley to the east; Algonquin land claim negotiations have been underway since 1992 and an Agreement-in-Principle was signed October 18, 2016.