La Cloche Lake
A Mountain Range Wilderness

La Cloche Lake, a large peaceful lake, is nestled among the white quartzite and pink granite hills and peaks of the La Cloche Mountain Range.  Click for map.

The French name “La Cloche” means “the bell.”  A fur trader, Alexander Henry, wrote in his diaries in the 1760’s that there is an “island called La Cloche because there is a rock … which being struck rings like a bell.”  The legend says that these rocks were Aboriginal tocsins (warning bells) used for signaling.  The “Bell Rocks” when struck could be heard for a considerable distance. It is believed that this is the reason the French named the area La Cloche.

La Cloche Lake enjoys miles of undeveloped wilderness shoreline. Only a small portion of the Lake has cabins. The water is deep and clear. Fishing includes northern pike, large and smallmouth bass, and lots of panfish. Lake trout have recently been introduced and walleye are being restocked. Presently there is no open season for either of these species. Wildlife is abundant. Visitors often get to enjoy loons, heron, beaver, otter, and occasional sightings of more secretive partridge, deer, moose, and black bear. La Cloche Lake is indeed an ideal peaceful vacation spot.

La Cloche Lake is formed by a watershed that is separated from the North Channel of Georgian Bay of Lake Huron by a ridge of the La Cloche Mountains.

The Lake empties into the North Channel through a small stream that flows past Post Hill and the historic site of Fort La Cloche, which was the headquarters for the Lake Huron Region of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

The La Cloche Mountain Range "… one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world,"* extends from Mt. McBean, West of the Lake, to Killarney Provincial Park on the East. "One million years ago, the ice age, advancing and retreating four times over, scoured the quartzite peaks, stripping them of soil, grinding and scarring their surfaces, and leaving behind sand, gravel, and boulders."* The shores of La Cloche Lake are decorated with rock slabs that have broken off the quartzite and granite mountains and round boulders that have been tumbled smooth and deposited by the glaciers.

* Killarney, by Kevin Callan, The Boston Mills Press, 1990