Ours River (Minganie)

The Ours River has two branches that join about 4 miles (6.4 km) from its mouth on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Both have many rapids and small falls, and are impassable by canoe.[1] The mouth of the river is in the municipality of Havre-Saint-Pierre in the Minganie Regional County Municipality.[2] The mouth is in the Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve. The name "Rivière à l'Ours" appears on a map dated 1960, and was made official on 5 December 1968.[3]

The river drains Lac à l'Ours, Lac Kakuahkuepaniuhiht, Lac Malville, Petit lac Uatnakantuk, Lac à la Peur, Lac Mannier and Lac Cormier.[3] The river basin covers 260 square kilometres (100 sq mi). It lies between the basins of the Romaine River to the west and the Corneille River to the east.[4] It is partly in the unorganized territory of Lac-Jérôme and partly in the municipality of Havre-Saint-Pierre.[5] The region around Lac à l'Ours can be reached by canoe from the Romaine, Puyjalon and Ours rivers, with only a few short portages, but the easiest access is by float plane. The region was explored by Henry de Puyjalon, Joseph Obalski and James Richardson[lower-alpha 1] around the end of the 19th century, and various geologists visited the region after that.[7]

The coastal plain is flat and marshy, with a layer of marine deposits. Inland the region is a peneplain or plateau in which the bedrock is almost continuously exposed. The surface is very irregular, deeply incised by many V-shaped valleys whose direction is determined by shear zones, faults, and by glacial action along the joints parallel to the ice movement. Average elevations of the hills are 400 feet (120 m), with the river bottoms 200 feet (61 m) lower.[8]

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.[9] As of 1966 most of the region had no trees, since a forest fire twenty years earlier had destroyed almost all the vegetation and burned the thin layer of humus that covered the rock. There were some trees remaining along the rivers, mostly balsam fir, spruce, birch and aspen. The area had many beaver, which were trapped by the Indians of the Mingan Reserve, but not so much as to wipe them out. Other common animals included otter, mink, hare, partridge, duck, bear and fox. There were few caribou or moose. The lakes hold landlocked salmon and brook trout.[10]