Navigating Northeastern Ontario’s Landscape
Northeastern Ontario offers boundless opportunities for exploration, but knowing exactly where you are legally permitted to tread—is paramount. This guide is your compass to quickly reference government maps and data, ensuring you have accurate and current information for your adventure. Success in the vast wilderness starts with good trip planning, which relies entirely on understanding property boundaries and land use policies. We’ll show you how to leverage online resources to help address legal compliance and maximize safety in the wilderness before you even pack your bags.
This post is for informational purposes and should not be used as a guarantee of legal compliance.
MLAS: Your Data Companion in Northeastern Ontario
The way to find legal open ground is through the Ontario governments MLAS (Mining Lands Administration System) You can take the time to learn this system or you can follow this process below to access and find the owned ground (Mining Patents, Leases and other surface rights owned areas.)
How to find them; click this link into the MLAS system
https://www.lioapplications.lrc.gov.on.ca/MLAS/Index.html?viewer=MLAS.MLAS&locale=en-CA
wait about 1 minute until it reaches a disclaimer area. Read it over and click “Accept”. You will reach a map. Zoom and navigate to “Kirkland Lake” as you are zooming you will notice that you have to wait for the system to catch up – be patient. While zooming in the screen will eventually turn into a pink-green-orange hard to navigate screen.
Next
In the top-left there are 4 tabs. Click on “Map Information” then click “Select Map Layers” then click the “+” beside MLAS and de-select all the items inside MLAS.
Zoom and navigate to get both Kirkland Lake and to the Northeast – “Victoria Lake” on the screen. Then reselect the box “Mining Land Tenure” under the MLAS menu.
Now – all the areas that are pink including the hashed lines areas are lands that you cannot legally search for meteorites on unless you strike up a deal with the land owner.
The rest of the areas are grounds for meteorite searching without permission. You can even camp on these crown lands for free. These are either staked or unstaked (open) lands. If they are staked the entity (company or individual) owns the mineral rights to the bedrock and mineral rights found in the overburden (soil, rocks etc.) but not the surface rights.
Note: that the area on the north end of Victoria Lake along a highway is a great meteorite searching area.
You can make screenshots to located areas and save these to your paint program.
Being “In-The-Know”: Explore
Securing accurate and current information from government maps is the cornerstone of responsible land use in Northeastern Ontario. This diligence supports good trip planning and dramatically improves safety in the wilderness by anticipating potential risks. Ultimately, referencing the provincial MLAS data is your best method for ensuring legal compliance, respecting property rights. With these tools, you are prepared to confidently explore the region’s incredible amount of open lands for meteorite exploration.
Meteorites and Crown Land “From a Google Gemini Search”
In Canada, the legal principle is that the landowner owns the meteorite. Since provincial Crown land which incluses staked or open ground, is owned by the government (the Crown), any meteorite found on this land is technically the property of the Crown (i.e., the provincial government).
However, the general practice in Canada is more nuanced:
No Mandatory Reporting: Reporting a meteorite find in Canada is not mandatory under the law, though it is strongly encouraged for scientific purposes.
Public/Crown Land: Unlike some other countries, there are generally no restrictions on a Canadian citizen searching for or physically taking meteorites found on public/Crown land, with the understanding that the Crown retains the legal ownership.
