Matamec River

The Matamec River is 66.5 kilometres (41.3 mi) long.^[1] It rises near Lake Cacaoni and flows from north to south. It passes through Lake Matamec less than 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from its mouth. The river is rich in fish.^[2] The mouth of the river is in the municipality of Sept-Îles in the Sept-Rivières Regional County Municipality. The river enters Moisie Bay to the northeast of the community of Matamec.^[3]

The river takes its name from the Innu language matamek, meaning "trout". In an 1865 map of the canton of Moisie the Matamek River or Trout River is shown as the eastern boundary. The Geography Commission made the name Matamek River official in 1916. The form "Matamec River" was adopted in the early 1960s.^[2]

The river basin cover 679 square kilometres (262 sq mi). It lies between the basins of the Moisie River to the west and the Loups Marins River to the east.^[4] The basin is partly in the unorganized territory of Rivière-Nipissis and partly in the municipality of Sept-Îles.^[5]

The basin is on Precambrian shield. The bedrock is close to the surface in the interior, but is overlain by marine deposits in the coastal plain.^[6] The bedrock is in the Grenville Province. Metamorphic rock is gneiss, granitic gneiss and paragneiss Igneous rock is anorthosite, gabronite and granite. During the last ice age the area was covered in ice until around 9,000 years age, which left deposits of glacial till of varying depths throughout the region.^[7] When the icecap retreated the south of the basin was covered by the Goldthwait Sea to a maximum depth of 130 metres (430 ft). The sea retreated as the land rebounded from the weight of the ice, leaving deposits of sea clay in the lowlands, often now covered with ombrotrophic peat bogs.^[1]

The Matamec watershed contains 31 lakes, ponds and bogs.^[6] Rivers and lakes are oriented along fracture zones, faults and breaks in the bedrock, and are usually surrounded by steep, rocky hillsides.^[1] Major tributaries of the Matamec river are the Tchinicanam and Rats-Musqués rivers.^[1] There are five waterfalls along the 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) stretch of the river from Matamec Lake and the Gulf.^[6] Lakes include Lake Matamec and Lake La Croix. Lake Matamec is 105 metres (344 ft) deep.^[1]

Average annual temperature is from −1.5 to −1.9 °C (29.3 to 28.6 °F).^[7] A map of the ecological regions of Quebec shows the river in sub-regions 6j-T and 6m-T of the east spruce/moss subdomain.^[8] Vegetation includes boreal forest with virgin stands of black spruce (Picea mariana) and balsam fir (Abies balsamea).^[6]

Walter Amory his son Copley Amory bought a property at the mouth of the river in 1912.^[6] Copley Amory, an American, founded a boat building company where the hamlet of Matamec is today, and some families settled around the factory. There was a post office there from 1917 to 1941.^[2] Walter was a naturalist, and was interested in changes in the fish and game population, which sometimes caused great hardship to the local Innu. In 1931 Amory invited leading ecologists and geographers to the Matamek Conference on Biological Cycles. Charles Sutherland Elton, a prominent ecologist, was among the contributors, and Amory provided funding for Elton that was used to found the University of Oxford's Bureau of Animal Population.^[6]

In the mid-1930s Amory was forced to give up the Matamek operation due to business difficulties. Eventually the property was sold, and became a fishing camp for anglers, with a lodge and cabins scattered through timberland on the property.^[6] W. Gallienne was the first owner after Amory, and later sold it to J. Seward Johnson.^[9] In 1966 Johnson gave about 150 acres (61 ha) of land at the mouth of the river to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).^[6]