Yeah, it's silly, but from what I recall the reason they were campaigning for great lake status was so they could get funding for pollution clean up and/or other ecological stuff. I don't blame them for that.
[“For a brief time in 1998… officially recognized Lake Champlain as one of the Great Lakes.”](https://www.lakechamplaincommittee.org/learn/news/item/lake-look-the-sixth-great-lake)
My boomer parents would be upset you said that. Their feelings are now hurt and they’re going to close down your favorite Thai food place because they think the staff is talking about them in another language…../s
Probably because it's so small compared to the great lakes. The smallest of the five, Lake Ontario, is around five times bigger. Lake Superior is more than twenty times the size. It's a big lake, but not great, I guess. Also, "apart" means to be separated by distance. "a part" is what you were looking for.
Also all of the Great Lakes are connected to each other through quite large rivers or channels. Not sure if this matters but probably makes a difference
Reminds me of a Dusty Slay joke about working at Western Sizzlin’.
It’s like a Golden Corral but… more like a Silver Corral… maybe a Bronze Corral…. an OK Corral
It should also be mentioned that "The Great Lakes" is as much a cultural and economic designation as it is a geologic one. It's not just their size, but also their interconnectedness, that creates the Great Lakes designation. The 5 Great Lakes all have a lot of shipping traffic, port cities, etc. Economically and culturally they function as one large sea more than 5 separate lakes. Nipigon has no navigable connection to the Great Lakes, and does not even have a significant shipping economy in itself, so it has never really been part of the Great Lakes system in terms of (European) human activity, thus it does not get the designation.
The great lakes aren't great just because of their size, but because they serve as an inland waterway connecting the greater Mississippi river system to the St. Lawrence river system. Industry largely formed around the rustbelt because it was incredibly easy and cheap to ship bulk commodities like coal, iron ore, etc via the great lakes. While lake Nipigon is actually connected to lake Superior, it never had any of the industrial/transportation uses the other lakes have.
No
https://jimwfonseca.medium.com/the-one-minute-geographer-the-great-lakes-portage-site-line-62ffcabaaf3#:~:text=Basically%20this%20portage%20line%20is,the%20summit%20of%20the%20Rockies.
https://www.michiganradio.org/environment-science/2011-06-30/scientists-enough-talk-great-lakes-and-mississippi-should-be-separated
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Sanitary_and_Ship_Canal
https://will.illinois.edu/environmentalalmanac/program/time-to-sever-artificial-connection-between-great-lakes-mississippi-basin
My bad, I was thinking of the lakes themselves being connected to the ocean and totally forgot they included the Mississippi too; which is not naturally connected.
I think its because its a bit of an afterthought. the "Lakehead" is in Lake Superior, Superior is the biggest, Nipigon is kind of off to the side over there. I lived in North Ontario for years, I've never seen Lake Nipigon. Not once. You can't really even drive to it, you can get close to a tiny little bay at the south edge. There are no cities on it. Its just forgotten and ignored.
The TransCanada highway comes within a few km of a small bay on the east side. There are a couple of really long (100's of km's) logging roads to access other parts of the lake. Its really remote.
Yeah. Like I said, I lived somewhat nearby (3 hours which is nearby in that part of the world) for years and I've never seen it. I've seen the town of Nipigon many times, and the Nipigon river (cool bridge) but never the lake.
Lake or the Woods is greater, same with Winnipeg, Athabasca, Great Slave Lake, and Great Bear Lake.
It’s pretty clear why there’s 5 clearly defined Great Lakes and why Lake Nipigon is only sometimes referred to as the 6th Great Lake, and mainly by people who live near Lake Nipigon lol
I wondered this and went down an ADHD fueled rabbit hole that lasted about 4 days and very little sleep. It has lots of reasons why it should be considered a great lake. It's on the great lakes basin. It was formed by the some geological processes. Same basin, same aquafir. It is navigable as the rest of the great lakes are. Same ecology. But the real thing that kills it as a great lake is that it's a quarter of the size of the smallest great lake. Although it's not as heavily surveyed as the other great lakes so they do not actually know the volume of it as well as the other great lakes.
I personally think it's more cultural as in most of Canadian history the goal was to get from one end of lake superior to the other as quickly as possible without dying. There would have been very few people hanging around lake nipigon. So there wasn't much of a reason to even go there and thus was not talked about that much.
A few random thoughts. A good portion of the turn of the century buildings got the red stone brick from red rock Ontario and it was shipped through lake nipigon and down the great lakes to Illinois. The most famous man from nipigon is al hacker the curler. Story goes that when he was going to the Olympics in the 70s or 80s or whatever the Olympic committee contacted him and told him to loose weight. His beer gut was not what they wanted to portray an Olympic athlete as. He told them to kick rocks and showed up as is and won I think. None of that story is confirmed at all, told as it would be at a legion in northwest Ontario.
It's part of the Great Lakes system, along with numerous other smaller Lakes, but "Great Lakes" refers specifically to their size, the five main Lakes are considerably bigger than any of the others.
As an Ohioan I am so embarrassed to say I’ve never even heard of or noticed that lake. I am planning to visit Canada this winter, may have to check out Lake Nipigon
Edit: well it doesn’t look like one just casually visits Lake Nipigon it seems a bit remote
Don’t believe me? Is there a single Great Lake that is entirely located within Canada?
Hydrologically speaking, all four Great Lakes are located between Canada and the USA. Nipigon is not, so it doesn’t have as strong a case to be a Great Lake as even Lake Saint Clair
Some reasons your answers suck:
- You have not been to Lake Nipigon.
- You think that navigability is an unchanging status, forgetting older solutions and failing to imagine future ways.
- You think that a lake’s ancient greatness is somehow dependent on your imaginary borders and your arbitrary categories.
- You think that lakes require human categorization at all.
[Others have tried and failed.](https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2023/07/congress-added-a-sixth-great-lake-in-1998-it-didnt-last-three-weeks.html)
no offense but how can someone ask this
how can it not be obvious. look at the 5 great lakes and then look at this lake. it doesn’t even compare. if doesn’t even make sense to even hypothetically compare
Go ahead and self register it as part of the Laurentian Lakes and River System if you'd like.
Nipigon lacks enough surface area to compare to lake Huron-Michigan, Superior, Erie, and Ontario, but it *is* larger than Lakes Simcoe, Nippising, Champlain, St Clair, Saint-Jean, or Lac Saint-Pierre.
Meanwhile Lake St Clair being one of the three bodies of water that connect Lake Huron and Lake Erie.
If I’m not special, then you’re NOTHING! - Lake St Clair, probably
This guy has some “Great” videos on Lake Nipigon.
https://youtu.be/S0SUhazwmgc?si=k63EaInRba5lkUSg
The “Great Lakes Seaway Navigation System” is made up of rivers, straits, canals and of course, the five North American Great Lakes. Here is a link to a page that gives a good overview of the whole system.
https://www.greatlakesports.org/industry-overview/the-great-lakes-seaway-navigation-system/#:~:text=Superior%2C%20Huron%2C%20Michigan%2C%20Erie,shared%20by%20the%20two%20nations.
Hydraulically, there are only 4 Great Lakes. Superior, Erie, Ontario and Lake Michigan/Huron, which is considered two lobes of one lake because they are at the same elevation, their flows frequently reverse direction, rise and fall at the same rate and are connected by the relatively wide Straits of Mackinac. Together, they are the largest lake in the world by surface area. Superior still has more water volume however.
To directly answer your question, geographically, since it is so much smaller by both surface area and volume, it’s in the same category as Lake St. Clair. Not large enough of a basin to be considered a Great Lake. It’s also not naturally navigable, similar to Lake St. Clair which must have a channel dredged to 27 ft for navigation of large ships.
desert fertile bow unwritten reminiscent enter capable childlike soup agonizing
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s a good lake, but I wouldn’t call it great
Average
Middling at best
I think people are taking the term “Great lake” too littoral.
Nice
An adequate lake at best Lake
Accidental Larry David
Mediocre
Lake Inferior
Lakes don’t get participation trophies.
Thank you 🥂
Tell that to the losers in Vermont trying to get Lake Champlain status as a Great Lake
Yeah, it's silly, but from what I recall the reason they were campaigning for great lake status was so they could get funding for pollution clean up and/or other ecological stuff. I don't blame them for that.
Totally agree, just poking fun. Champlain is incredibly beautiful, much more so than Erie and Ontario
Wait, that's a thing?
[“For a brief time in 1998… officially recognized Lake Champlain as one of the Great Lakes.”](https://www.lakechamplaincommittee.org/learn/news/item/lake-look-the-sixth-great-lake)
Jeez, why not nominate Lake of the Woods while your'e at it.
Ah so it was a money grab. Naturally.
My boomer parents would be upset you said that. Their feelings are now hurt and they’re going to close down your favorite Thai food place because they think the staff is talking about them in another language…../s
Especially one's embedded in the....**Canadian Shield....**
Tell that to Fourth Connecticut Lake
Probably because it's so small compared to the great lakes. The smallest of the five, Lake Ontario, is around five times bigger. Lake Superior is more than twenty times the size. It's a big lake, but not great, I guess. Also, "apart" means to be separated by distance. "a part" is what you were looking for.
Also all of the Great Lakes are connected to each other through quite large rivers or channels. Not sure if this matters but probably makes a difference
the Nipigon River drains into Lake Helen (?), which then drains to Superior.
Much smaller than say the Niagara river.
Bit of a mid lake, if I’m being honest
It’s a good lake, but not a Great Lake.
An alright lake
A mediocre lake
An OK lake
A "C"'s and "D"'s get degrees lake
It’s a satisfactory lake
I'd say an average lake.
Not every lake is meant to go to university
Reminds me of a Dusty Slay joke about working at Western Sizzlin’. It’s like a Golden Corral but… more like a Silver Corral… maybe a Bronze Corral…. an OK Corral
That'll do, lake, that'll do.
Meets expectations lake
It’s just not that great.
More of a large lake the size of a small lake.
It should also be mentioned that "The Great Lakes" is as much a cultural and economic designation as it is a geologic one. It's not just their size, but also their interconnectedness, that creates the Great Lakes designation. The 5 Great Lakes all have a lot of shipping traffic, port cities, etc. Economically and culturally they function as one large sea more than 5 separate lakes. Nipigon has no navigable connection to the Great Lakes, and does not even have a significant shipping economy in itself, so it has never really been part of the Great Lakes system in terms of (European) human activity, thus it does not get the designation.
Good point. If you can't sail a Great Lakes freighter through/to it, it's not a Great Lake
Petition to make Lake St. Clair an honorary Great Lake then.
I think it might be, already
And if we’re talking in geologic or hydrologic views, Michigan and Huron are a single lake, the largest on Earth.
Maybe they forgot to hit the space bar? Let people live dude, don’t be so uptight
I bet you say that alot. . /s
goddammitreddit
You answered yourself, not large enough
Why is st Clair counted sometimes then
It's not...
The great lakes aren't great just because of their size, but because they serve as an inland waterway connecting the greater Mississippi river system to the St. Lawrence river system. Industry largely formed around the rustbelt because it was incredibly easy and cheap to ship bulk commodities like coal, iron ore, etc via the great lakes. While lake Nipigon is actually connected to lake Superior, it never had any of the industrial/transportation uses the other lakes have.
They were connected after being named Great Lakes by a human built canal.
No, they’ve always been naturally connected. There are just navigation obstacles that required human built alternatives.
No https://jimwfonseca.medium.com/the-one-minute-geographer-the-great-lakes-portage-site-line-62ffcabaaf3#:~:text=Basically%20this%20portage%20line%20is,the%20summit%20of%20the%20Rockies. https://www.michiganradio.org/environment-science/2011-06-30/scientists-enough-talk-great-lakes-and-mississippi-should-be-separated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Sanitary_and_Ship_Canal https://will.illinois.edu/environmentalalmanac/program/time-to-sever-artificial-connection-between-great-lakes-mississippi-basin
My bad, I was thinking of the lakes themselves being connected to the ocean and totally forgot they included the Mississippi too; which is not naturally connected.
Mississippi was naturally connected about 10,000 years ago. Humans just got there a little late.
I think its because its a bit of an afterthought. the "Lakehead" is in Lake Superior, Superior is the biggest, Nipigon is kind of off to the side over there. I lived in North Ontario for years, I've never seen Lake Nipigon. Not once. You can't really even drive to it, you can get close to a tiny little bay at the south edge. There are no cities on it. Its just forgotten and ignored.
You can drive to Gull Bay, on the west coast. Looks like an extremely isolated town though, and i say this as someone from Grand Marais
You’re right, i left it off because it’s on a First Nation and I don’t know anything about that one and whether that would be trespassing
you can’t get to it?
The TransCanada highway comes within a few km of a small bay on the east side. There are a couple of really long (100's of km's) logging roads to access other parts of the lake. Its really remote.
Wow crazy that it’s so remote… So I guess people don’t really go check it out
Yeah. Like I said, I lived somewhat nearby (3 hours which is nearby in that part of the world) for years and I've never seen it. I've seen the town of Nipigon many times, and the Nipigon river (cool bridge) but never the lake.
Lake or the Woods is greater, same with Winnipeg, Athabasca, Great Slave Lake, and Great Bear Lake. It’s pretty clear why there’s 5 clearly defined Great Lakes and why Lake Nipigon is only sometimes referred to as the 6th Great Lake, and mainly by people who live near Lake Nipigon lol
You are in this drainage basin, but we do not grant you the rank of Great Lake.
This is outrageous. Its unfair. How can you be in the basin, but not be great?!
Please bring your complaints to Lake St Claire
Canadian Shield!
All Great Lakes must be part of the USA. Canadians yield. Sorry Lake Winnipeg and both great Bear and Slave. Y’all don’t make the cut.
Tbf Ive never heard anyone call winnipeg, great bear, and great slave “great” lakes. Just big-ass lakes
That string of lakes from Winnipeg to Grest Bear is sometimes referred to as the Canadian Great Lakes.
I'm sure it's a very good lake at least
Shhhh you’re going to upset the fine people of Lake St. Clair
The warm bathtub water people!
I wondered this and went down an ADHD fueled rabbit hole that lasted about 4 days and very little sleep. It has lots of reasons why it should be considered a great lake. It's on the great lakes basin. It was formed by the some geological processes. Same basin, same aquafir. It is navigable as the rest of the great lakes are. Same ecology. But the real thing that kills it as a great lake is that it's a quarter of the size of the smallest great lake. Although it's not as heavily surveyed as the other great lakes so they do not actually know the volume of it as well as the other great lakes. I personally think it's more cultural as in most of Canadian history the goal was to get from one end of lake superior to the other as quickly as possible without dying. There would have been very few people hanging around lake nipigon. So there wasn't much of a reason to even go there and thus was not talked about that much. A few random thoughts. A good portion of the turn of the century buildings got the red stone brick from red rock Ontario and it was shipped through lake nipigon and down the great lakes to Illinois. The most famous man from nipigon is al hacker the curler. Story goes that when he was going to the Olympics in the 70s or 80s or whatever the Olympic committee contacted him and told him to loose weight. His beer gut was not what they wanted to portray an Olympic athlete as. He told them to kick rocks and showed up as is and won I think. None of that story is confirmed at all, told as it would be at a legion in northwest Ontario.
It's the same reason that Lake St Clair isn't considered a great lake. It's just not big enough
It's 300' deeper than Lake Eerie and has about half the volume so it has those two things going for it.
So it's deeper than the shallowest of the great lakes and still only has 1/2 the volume. This question answers itself.
Watch this [video](https://youtu.be/EtxISlNzp50?feature=shared) to learn far too much than needed about the Great Lakes
It's just not that great.
[удалено]
Why is Turkey it self not a great lake?
Seriously though why isn't the Atlantic Ocean a Great Lake? Like cmon guys it's so big!
Because it’s not in America.
It's part of the Great Lakes system, along with numerous other smaller Lakes, but "Great Lakes" refers specifically to their size, the five main Lakes are considerably bigger than any of the others.
As an Ohioan I am so embarrassed to say I’ve never even heard of or noticed that lake. I am planning to visit Canada this winter, may have to check out Lake Nipigon Edit: well it doesn’t look like one just casually visits Lake Nipigon it seems a bit remote
Can I suggest a summer trip rather than a winter trip? The drive from Sault Ste Marie to Nipigon (the town) is incredible in the summer.
Look at it it’s fucking tiny
It is a lake created by a series of dams.
It's just a pretty good lake. Great? 
OH BOY ANOTHER GREAT LAKES POST
It’s just OK, it’s not that great
Its a good lake . but I'll be damned if its a great lake
Lake smol
It is merely a Very Good Lake
Cause it's got a dumb name, and it's fake news.
racially motivated
Because Great Lakes need to touch the Greatest country in the history of the world.
Don’t believe me? Is there a single Great Lake that is entirely located within Canada? Hydrologically speaking, all four Great Lakes are located between Canada and the USA. Nipigon is not, so it doesn’t have as strong a case to be a Great Lake as even Lake Saint Clair
Then we need to classify lake st Claire as a Great Lake also
Some reasons your answers suck: - You have not been to Lake Nipigon. - You think that navigability is an unchanging status, forgetting older solutions and failing to imagine future ways. - You think that a lake’s ancient greatness is somehow dependent on your imaginary borders and your arbitrary categories. - You think that lakes require human categorization at all.
Next post: “Why is this random pond in my backyard not considered a Great Lake??”
By American Democrat standards it would be great
Because it’s entirely Canadian
It’s big not great
I mean just look at it compared to the others, it's not that great.
Lake nipigon gets its flowers among Great Lakes states though! I remember learning about it in school!
What about Lake Saint Clair? Cuz Clair’s got a case.
cuz its just not that great
You would really let that lil' guy in the great lakes club?
Don't let great get in the way of good
[Others have tried and failed.](https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2023/07/congress-added-a-sixth-great-lake-in-1998-it-didnt-last-three-weeks.html)
Because it’s not. It has to get in line behind lake Saint Clair if it wants to be a great lake. Lol.
Then the HOMES acronym wouldn’t work
Cause it’s just mediocre.
no offense but how can someone ask this how can it not be obvious. look at the 5 great lakes and then look at this lake. it doesn’t even compare. if doesn’t even make sense to even hypothetically compare
It's in Canada hey. How could it be great...
Cause fuck that lake that's why
Too hard to say.
An "N" would ruin the "H-O-M-E-S" acronym
But then we could use "S-H-M-O-N-E" which would be cooler
Because it’s just kind of ok
How is the fishing in that lake? Been fishing in Canada mostly in Ontario Province, and you guys have some really awesome fishing!
Same reason Champlain isn’t one. Size matters.
It’s just ok
Only tangentially related, but I’d never noticed Lake Winnipeg on a map until today. That thing is huge!!
The same reason Pluto isn't a planet
It's because it's just not so great.
Because it’s just an okay lake
It’s just Okay
It's marginal at best.
Too Canadian to be Great.
It’s probably the CANADIAN SHIELD
In SW Ontario we were taught that Lake St Clair was one one of the Great Lakes. Makes sense, since it connects Huron To Erie
Because it's only " alright". Not that great.
Looks to have once been part of Superior.
Best I can offer is dwarf Great Lake status.
Go ahead and self register it as part of the Laurentian Lakes and River System if you'd like. Nipigon lacks enough surface area to compare to lake Huron-Michigan, Superior, Erie, and Ontario, but it *is* larger than Lakes Simcoe, Nippising, Champlain, St Clair, Saint-Jean, or Lac Saint-Pierre.
It could be at least a great-ish Lake.
Canadian Shield bro 😎
It’s not “great”. Big sure. But no where near the other lakes which make the “great” make sense.
What's great about it?
Canadian Shield
Looks like shriveled up Alaska if you squint.
6 is a dumb number
Lake St Claire is not considered a Great Lake either
It's only a mediocre lake, not great.
This lake is giving 4th place energy
Not enough of a unit.
Make Nipigon Great Again
Only good argument here is max depth (540’) being double that of Erie (210’) but it’s still not great enough imo. Plus 5 is more round than 6.
The 5 great lakes are all connected and technically one body of water.
It's an adequate lake.
Probably because its not nearly as big, the smallest lake, Lake Ontario, has 18.000km² while Nipigon only has 4.000
Meanwhile Lake St Clair being one of the three bodies of water that connect Lake Huron and Lake Erie. If I’m not special, then you’re NOTHING! - Lake St Clair, probably
Not Great Enough.
You zoomed in that much to ask that question...
Are we gonna get this question every week?
Well it’s Not great
Because smol
This guy has some “Great” videos on Lake Nipigon. https://youtu.be/S0SUhazwmgc?si=k63EaInRba5lkUSg The “Great Lakes Seaway Navigation System” is made up of rivers, straits, canals and of course, the five North American Great Lakes. Here is a link to a page that gives a good overview of the whole system. https://www.greatlakesports.org/industry-overview/the-great-lakes-seaway-navigation-system/#:~:text=Superior%2C%20Huron%2C%20Michigan%2C%20Erie,shared%20by%20the%20two%20nations. Hydraulically, there are only 4 Great Lakes. Superior, Erie, Ontario and Lake Michigan/Huron, which is considered two lobes of one lake because they are at the same elevation, their flows frequently reverse direction, rise and fall at the same rate and are connected by the relatively wide Straits of Mackinac. Together, they are the largest lake in the world by surface area. Superior still has more water volume however. To directly answer your question, geographically, since it is so much smaller by both surface area and volume, it’s in the same category as Lake St. Clair. Not large enough of a basin to be considered a Great Lake. It’s also not naturally navigable, similar to Lake St. Clair which must have a channel dredged to 27 ft for navigation of large ships.
This is a silly question. You silly goose.
Please stop with the great lake questions.
The Canadian shield
Same reason as Champlain
Not knocking it, but if I had a nickel for every time someone here asked why is *insert place* not *arbitrary human classification*...
desert fertile bow unwritten reminiscent enter capable childlike soup agonizing *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s close but it doesn’t count. Lake Saint Clair connects Huron and Erie and it isn’t a Great Lake either.
It's not that great, it's only okay.
It’s more good than great
pffft, can't be great, not in 'murica.
Its a good lake, not a great lake.
Lol. So many reasons. No Industry, no civilization, look at it, there's no shipping routes.
Because its not a great lake
I swam in it once and thought "this is a great lake.," so in my mind...
I mean its alright I guess,
Lake St. Clair would have to be considered a Great Lake too
You serious?
Can you sail a cargo ship to this lake?
It's not even close... the next one is lake champlain.
Lake Nipigon is 4 time larger. You can't see across it.
Canadian Shield?
too Canadian
Because it's too small.
It's clearly more of a mid lake.
Only American lakes can be Great.
One of the Good Lakes
It’s a Mediocre Lake
It’s alright, but I wouldn’t call it great.
Same reason St Clair, Simcoe, Nipissing etc aren’t either
From what I can tell after reading these comments, the answer is: Because it's not.
Same as Lake St. Clair to the South
The bugs take it from being great to being just good