Somewhere in the boreal forests of south-west Quebec, there was a lake that looked like an emoji from space. Lake Rouge, next to two smaller round lakes, made a clear shocked face: wide open mouth under two round eyes. It was the kind of thing that did the rounds on satellite photography blogs, got a couple of thousand likes, and was forgotten.
But in May 2025, members of the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi were driving down a logging road when they saw something deeply wrong. Mud everywhere, dead fish scattered all over the ground, and no obvious source. They followed the trail to an empty crater which had once been a lake of about a square mile in extent.
