Our Villages and Hamlets

Rideau Lakes is a community of Villages and Hamlets. Explore and learn about the landscape and the people. Each village and hamlet have a unique culture and story to tell. Whether you’re a visitor looking to discover your roots in the area, a family trying out an adventure on the water, or an urbanite seeking a safe and quiet, rural lifestyle… Rideau Lakes will find a place in your heart.

Thousands of years before European settlers arrived in what is now called Rideau Lakes, Algonquin/Omàmìwininì people and proto-Hurons thrived in these lands. When Samuel de Champlain first encountered Algonquins in the 1600s, the Algonquin People and proto-Hurons had established complex social and political structures for governing their homeland. Little of this history is known by the current non-Indigenous occupants of this territory. However, Indigenous artifacts have been discovered around Sand Lake and Opinicon Lake that are more than 2000 years old. More recently, European settlers arrived just over 200 years ago. From ingenuity and hard work, several small communities were born in Rideau Lakes.