The History of Wawa, Ontario: How Did It Get Its Name?

The name Wawa, adopted in the 1890s, comes from the Ojibwa word meaning 'wild goose' and was first applied to Lake Wawa, where the community was established. This lake is a resting place for migrating Canadian geese. A traveler with belts and abrasives recently reported that his company's business office had annoyed him for putting Wawa instead of Jamestown on their shipping labels. Wawa's location on the northeastern shore of Lake Superior makes it a natural stop when traveling the Great Lake. Jackson (Shoreline, Wawa, Lake Superior) is a beautiful beach that serves as a natural meeting place for locals and visitors.

Gold mining in the Wawa area has prospered and regressed several times in the 20th century, and continues today. When the company decided to ditch its fleet of trucks and cultivate transportation, it sold the trucks on favorable terms, including a long-term contract, to two Wawa businessmen, Louis Mudge and Aimé Breton. In response to a petition sponsored by two members of the Wawa House, a secret ballot was organized in the municipal elections last December. With the fall of the milk delivery business in the early 1960s, the company moved to Wawa stores, and the Palm Coast store opened on June 18 coinciding with the opening of its 900th store in New Jersey on the same day. The original group had devoted a lot of discussion to re-including Wawa in the railway schedules, postal book and telephone book.

What was left of the Wawa House elected Derek Baker as president and decided to get to work on incorporation. The convenience store and gas station chain known as Wawa opened its first store with that name on April 16, 1964 in Folsom, Pennsylvania. At the first hint of the proposal to change the city's name, a strong Wawa faction had emerged, pitted by the suggestion of corporate interference and a strong love for India's historical names specifically, “Wawa”. The Wawa faction claimed that there were dozens of signatures with identical handwriting, names of bunk residents, bystanders and high school students. Meanwhile, a young British man, Derek Baker, had arrived in town to open a Wawa office for the Sault Daily Star.

If it remained Wawa, it would be an open city; if it was moved to Jamestown, it would be dominated by the company. The municipality includes the main population center of Wawa, as well as smaller communities such as Michipicoten and Michipicoten River - small coastal settlements on Lake Superior's shores.