Le Pate, the westernmost mesa on Pie Island, is also its highest point. Formed by a diabase sill -- the same type of volcanic intrusion that shaped much of the region's dramatic geology -- the mesa is cliffed on all sides. Its top is mostly flat but slopes near the edges, cut by gullies that drain into the surrounding forest. Because the island is largely inaccessible to regular human traffic and the climb to the mesa top is genuinely difficult, vegetation has been left to mature undisturbed. Wind governs everything up there: the height of the trees, the shape of the shrubs, the direction the branches grow. It is a place where geology and weather have collaborated for millennia without much human interference, creating an ecosystem that exists almost entirely on its own terms.

In the 19th century, Pie Island drew prospectors hunting for silver. Algoma Member of Parliament Simon James Dawson operated a mine on the island. Augustine W. Daby of Massachusetts took charge of the Pie Island Silver Mining Company in July 1881, but the venture ended badly -- the operation was sold by sheriff in February 1884 and again in November 1885. John McKellar also tried his luck mining there. Not everyone came for silver, though. Lawyer Francis Henry Keefer, Daby's son-in-law, and his brother Thomas Keefer established a farm on the island where they grew hay as early as 1888. Today, Keefer Point and Dawson Bay preserve the names of these politicians-turned-islanders, geographic reminders of an era when ambition outpaced the island's willingness to yield its riches.

A lighthouse was established on Pie Island in 1895, originally placed at the western end to guide shipping through Lake Superior's treacherous waters. But the location proved inadequate. In July 1904, the Dominion government moved the lighthouse to the island's north point, where its beam could be seen from a greater distance. The light served mariners for decades, a solitary beacon on an island that was otherwise mostly uninhabited. By 1953, the lighthouse had been abandoned. It stood empty and deteriorating for more than half a century before being demolished in the summer of 2010. Today, a simple light on a five-metre skeletal tower marks the spot -- functional but without the romance of the original structure.

Pie Island's most significant story is one of patience. When the Robinson Treaty of 1850 allocated reserve lands to the Fort William First Nation, the government surveyor recommended in 1853 that Pie Island be included as part of the reserve. His recommendation was never acted upon. For over 150 years, the island remained in limbo. Negotiations between Canada, Ontario, and the Fort William First Nation finally began in 2000 and concluded in December 2011. Ontario transferred provincial Crown land on both Pie Island and nearby Flatland Island to the First Nation, including the 250-hectare Le Pate Provincial Nature Reserve. Chief Peter Collins called the settlement a fulfillment of the Treaty of 1850's original promises, saying the land and resources would create businesses, employment, and opportunities benefiting both the First Nation and the entire Thunder Bay area. The privately owned cottages on the island's southern tip were not subject to the claim and remain in private hands.

When the Ontario Legislature created a municipality in 1873 to govern settlements around Thunder Bay, Pie Island was folded into the Municipality of Shuniah as part of Island Ward. For over sixty years, this remote island in Lake Superior was technically a municipal ward -- a bureaucratic oddity for a place with almost no permanent residents. In 1936, the Legislature abolished Island Ward at the municipality's request. Today, a handful of summer cottages still dot the island's southern tip, their owners arriving by boat during the warm months and departing before the lake freezes. But the island's identity has shifted. It is no longer a ward, a mining claim, or an overlooked treaty obligation. It belongs, at last, to the people who fished its surrounding waters and called the broader territory home long before anyone thought to name it after a meat pie.