Magnetawan is a township in the Almaguin Highlands region of the Parry Sound District in the Canadian province of Ontario, as well as the name of the primary population centre in the township. The Township of Magnetawan was formed in 1998 through the amalgamation of the Township of Chapman and the Village of Magnetawan, along with the unincorporated geographic Townships of Croft and Spence. The word Magnetawan in the Algonquin language means "swiftly flowing river." Barbara Hanley, the first woman ever elected mayor of a community in Canada, was born in Magnetawan in 1882. Magnetawan is the setting for The Rogue Hunter, the tenth book in the popular Urban Fantasy Argeneau series by Ontario-born author Lynsay Sands. Communities The township comprises the communities of Ahmic Harbour, Ahmic Lake, Cecebe, Cedar Croft, Chikopi, Dufferin Bridge, Magnetawan, North Seguin, Oranmore, Pearceley, Port Anson and Port Carmen, as well as the ghost town of Spence. The community is twinned with the city of Baltimore, Maryland. History The first people to inhabit the region were the Hurons, Ojibway and Algonquins, who would visit the area in the summer for hunting and fishing but sheltered on Georgian Bay in the winter. While some Europeans explored the region in the early 19th century, settlement and colonization by Europeans was hardly taking place, so much so that the government considered turning the entire region into an Indian reserve. But when pine stands in southern Ontario became depleted, the area attracted loggers and the government changed its mind and encouraged settlement through free land grants, first offered in 1853. Settlement happened slowly but accelerated when the colonization road from Rosseau to Nipissing began being built in 1866. In 1868, the government passed the Free Grand Land and Homestead Act and began advertising this extensively in European countries to attract new immigrants. Croft Township was surveyed in 1869, Chapman Township in 1870, and the village of Magnetawan was mapped out in 1873. The Great North Road, from Parry Sound to Nipissing, reached the Magnetawan at Ahmic Harbour, in 1870. The stretch of the colony road, from Rousseau to Nipissing reached the Magnetawan in 1874, where the historic village of Magnetawan was built. In 1879 a pair of small steamships started carrying cargo and passengers over the reach from the rapids at the village upstream to Burk's Falls. Burk's Falls was linked to the south by a railroad in 1885.