The first recorded image near Sparrow Lake is this 1794 painting on birch-bark of McDonald Rapids on the Severn River by Lady Elizabeth Simcoe.
![](https://www.sparrowlake.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/ladysimcoe.jpg)
Lake Simcoe drains to the north through Lake Couchiching to the Severn River. The Severn River flows into Sparrow Lake at the southeast corner and exits about 2 miles later at the northwest corner, where there were originally a series of rapids known as the Sparrow Lake Chutes, McDonald Rapids, Ragged Rapids, and Wallace Rapids (later renamed Swift Rapids.) These rapids were eliminated with the construction of the Trent-Severn waterway system in 1917.
Compiled by David Stanton and Steve Stanton, with credit to “Severn River,” by James T. Angus.