The town was named after
Ignace Mentour by Sir
Sandford Fleming in 1879. Ignace Mentour was the key Indigenous guide through this region during Fleming's 1872 railway survey, recorded in
George Monro Grant's journal of the survey,
Ocean to Ocean. Mentour had also served with
Sir George Simpson in Simpson's final years as governor of
Rupert's Land. During Ignace's early days, there was a settlement of railway boxcars used by the English residents there called "Little England". Although Ignace was incorporated in 1908, it was something of a latecomer to some modern conveniences, such as rotary dial telephone, which did not arrive in the town until 1956. The town expanded during the life of several zinc-copper mines in the Sturgeon Lake area, 80 km north of the town. Today, forestry and tourism support Ignace's economy. One attraction is the three-storey log
White Otter Castle, located on
White Otter Lake at Turtle River, and built by James Alexander McOuat between 1903 and 1914. In the 1950s, Ignace's first newspaper, the
Village Tattler, started there to serve the town. It was published by the local
YMCA. In 1971, Dennis Smyk started the
Ignace Driftwood, which was suspended two years later, but was revived in 1979 and ran until 2018. During
Driftwood's suspension, the
Ignace Courier was published for the town's local news. In 2021, as part of a search for a site for a deep geological repository for Canada's used nuclear fuel, the
Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) drilled boreholes in a rock formation known as the Revell Batholith, located south of Highway 17, about 35 kilometres west of Ignace (between Ignace and
Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation). On November 28, 2024, the NWMO selected Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and the township of Ignace as the site of a nuclear waste repository. Construction is expected to begin in the mid 2030s and become operational in the early 2040s. == Demographics ==