HIKING THE NOPIMING GAME PRESERVE

Charles Macnamara had a way with animals and people.

As he hiked the forest adjacent to Marshall’s Bay on the upper Ottawa River in the early-1900s, he visualized a living, breathing sanctuary for future generations. Equipped with his camera, field glasses, sketchpad, notebook, hot coffee and lunch, Macnamara scoured the woods for the life forms that fed the greater whole. He documented the breath and bud of the forest, a living organism shaped through natural change and inevitable succession.


Macnamara’s October 4, 1925 journal entry reads, “The leaves are just beginning to change colour. The green is fading to yellow, and a maple here and there is turning to scarlet. There is scarcely any air moving down here, but in the sky, fleets of small white clouds are sailing up from the west. It makes me feel small but gives me a sense of protection.”

Macnamara shared his vision with local landowners, and with their support in his back pocket, lobbied the Ontario government to protect what gave him a sense of protection.

On December 22, 1920, the lands were declared a game sanctuary.

The Crown Game Preserve stretched to the north bounded by the Mississippi and Ottawa Rivers, to the east by the line between lots 22 and 23 on the 5th concession in Fitzroy Township, to the west by the Madawaska River and to the south by the Canadian National Railway. The lands remain a game sanctuary to this day, and it is one of only a handful in Ontario located on private land.

Macnamara named the sanctuary “Nopiming,” an Ojibwa term for “in the woods.”

The Macnamara Nature Trail, located on the eastern edge of the town of Arnprior, is the gateway to the Nopiming. The interpretive trail is 4.5 kilometres in length and maintained by the Macnamara Field Naturalist Club (MFNC). Beyond the maintained trails are many kilometres of stone, wood, foliage, soil and animal life undisturbed by the human hand. With the exception of a cluster of homes and cottages between Pocket Bay to the east and Indian Point to the west, nature has been left to evolve on its own.

“I’ve always felt at home in a natural setting, and this is the perfect place,” says Maryanne Koot of Arnprior, a member of the MFNC who has hiked the Nopiming for 15 years. “Being here gives me peace of mind, but it is never dull in the forest. I love seeing what stage of growth plants are in, what’s blooming and what’s in bud.”

I tighten up my well-worn hiking boots and stretch out my limbs. It is a beautiful mid-May morning. The sun is bright, but the air is cold. I hoist my backpack, weighed down by my camera, notepad and lunch. Macnamara would be proud.

I feel the solid rock beneath my boots. The flora and fauna of the Nopiming share a rich existence on a scant layer of soil. The sanctuary is anchored by the Canadian Shield, where billions of years ago, heat and pressure transformed the existing rocks into the metamorphic rocks found here today. Exposed escarpments of Precambrian marble mark the trail.

High above the forest floor waves the tree canopy, fighting for species domination and succession. White ash, butternut hickory, large-tooth aspen, eastern hemlock, white pine, white birch, mountain maple, striped maple and sugar maple all take breath – and space – where they can.

Between the rocky floor and leafy ceiling is a rich and interdependent tapestry of plant and animal. A slow ascent brings me to Stop #4 on the trail, where a creek flows into Goodwin Bay on the Ottawa River. Beavers have widened and deepened the channel and a small pond upstream contains a beaver lodge.

Wildflowers bud along the edge of the creek: blue vervain, boneset, swamp milkweed, Joe-Pye weed, jewelweed and purple loosestrife are beginning to bloom.

I ascend the trail and follow the boardwalk to a lookout tower. A marsh spreads out before me where yellow bullhead lilies grow during the summer months. Shrubs and small trees are creeping into the stagnant waters and the marsh will eventually become a swamp forest in future generations. Succession never rests.

A small peninsula extends into the water. An abandoned two-room shanty is rotting to ruin on the narrow strip of land. The empty windows, the eyes of the structure, must have afforded a fabulous view to the occupants at one time: to the south is the marsh and to the north is Goodwin’s Bay and the open waters of Lac des Chats.

I lunch at Stop #12, the most western edge of the maintained trail. I refuel with coffee, a peach, ginger cookies and two cheese, lettuce and onion sandwiches — a Macnamara hiking staple.


At one time, this was a field owned by the McLachlin Lumber Company. The property, still referred to as the Brown Farm, was abandoned more than 50 years ago and left to the dictates of nature. A mini-forest of staghorn sumac has taken over, but they are aging and few seedlings are growing to replace them.

Sugar maples are encroaching on the stand. Once established, sugar maples usually dominate a forest and they support birds like red-eyed vireos, eastern woodpeckers and scarlet tanagers. Many other species cycle through the year in the Nopiming, including pileated woodpecker, wood duck, barred owl, eastern screech owl, great crested flycatcher and white-breasted nuthatch.

I crest the plateau at Stop #18. Some major force has removed the original species, white pine, from this area. Perhaps it was fire, or human hands and the long arm of logging.

I descend down the trail and loop back to the main trail where ferns grow to the sides. Abandoned trails and roads are filled in and grown over with the daisy-leaved grape fern. Nopiming mammals range in size from the tiny deer mouse and flying squirrels to rabbits, raccoons, porcupines, foxes and white -tailed deer. They find food and shelter on the forest floor and among the rotting trees that feed the cycle of natural regeneration.

Back at Stop #4, I rest at an abandoned lime kiln. It was built by the McLachlin Lumber Company in the mid- to late-1800s and was likely last used more than a century ago. The limestone structure is a crumbling testament to natural (and inevitable) succession. What man can mark, nature can erase.

Natural change ends at the parking lot and kiosk desk. My legs and feet remember the climbs and descents over ancient stone. I’m flushed and the air is sharp in my lungs. I’m invigorated, awake and aware of the living and breathing whole that I am part of. It’s good to be one.

The preserve and sanctuary is nature in action, succeeding, as it should. Strap on your boots and become a piece of the action.

Hike at your own pace.

The Nopiming Game Preserve is located 25 minutes west of the Corel Centre Scotia Bank Place in the town of Arnprior. Take the Arnprior exit off Highway 417, turn right at the stop sign, turn left on Madawaska Boulevard, drive one kilometre, turn right on McNab Drive and look for McLachlin Trail parking lot on the right side.

--Harry Gallon is a resident of Antrim who works as a freelance writer, editor and photographer. He enjoys camping, fishing, canoeing and biking with his two boys.