Lake Ojibway
| Lake Ojibway | |
|---|---|
Glacial Lake Agassiz and Lake Ojibway (7,900 YBP) | |
| Location | Ontario & Quebec |
| Coordinates | 48°N 80°W / 48°N 80°W |
| Lake type | former lake |
| Etymology | Chippewa Nation |
| Primary inflows | Laurentide Ice Sheet |
| Primary outflows | Ottawa River valley |
| Basin countries | Canada |
| First flooded | 9,160 years before present |
| Max. length | 1,314 mi (2,115 km) |
| Max. width | 365 mi (587 km) 212 mi (341 km) |
| Residence time | 1900 years in existence |
| Surface elevation | 820 ft (250 m) |
| References | Coleman, Arthur Philemon (1909). "Lake Ojibway; Last of the Great Glacial Lakes". Ontario Bureau of Mines. Report 18 (4): 284–293. Retrieved 30 October 2015. |
Lake Ojibway was a prehistoric lake in what is now northern Ontario and Quebec in Canada. Ojibway was the last of the great proglacial lakes of the last ice age. The proglacial lake was named Ojibway in 1909 by Canadian geologist Arthur Philemon Coleman after an Indigenous people whose homeland coincides with his proposed location of the lake. Comparable in size to Lake Agassiz (to which it was likely linked), and north of the Great Lakes, it was at its greatest extent c. 8,500 years BP. The former lakebed forms the modern Clay Belt, an area of fertile land.
Lake Ojibway was relatively short-lived. The lake likely drained approximately 8,200 years BP. One hypothesis is that a weakening ice dam separating it from Hudson Bay broke, as the lake was roughly 250 m (820 ft) above sea level but recent studies assert Lake Ojibway drained in two separate events and through a combination of ice dam breach and subglacial flooding.