(It’s the last day of Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’re almost done with posting about islands. And it’s lasted about a week.)

Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada is officially the world’s largest island that is located within a lake.

That’s pretty simple, but within the island there are an additional 180 lakes…

Within one of those lakes, Mindemoya Lake (to be precise), is the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake (in the world). Still with me?

But we’ve missed out a step! On the island of Sumatra in Indonesia we find Lake Toba, and its principal island of Samosir - which at 630 square km is easily the largest island, in a lake, on a island.

After Samosir, the second largest island within a lake is Glover Island, which is in the Grand Lake on the island of Newfoundland.

However, Glover Island’s largest lake also has many islands, of which the largest is about 2 acres. This tiny, unnamed island is therefore the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake, on an island!

Unfortunately, it has no lakes in which we might find further islands.

Seeing as it’s island week, we’ve left out many additional facts about the largest lakes found on islands (some of which are larger that the lakes containing islands we’ve mentioned here) but I think this post has been confusing enough!

Wikipedia: Manitoulin Island, Samosir & Glover Island

Thanks to Dee, kejoad, Daryl, Chris W, Boing boing, Elbruz.org and World Island Info.

There’s a nice story on Vanity Fair about how the author, Nick Tosches, spent more than a year attempting to track down the shot location of a desktop picture called Autumn that came with his copy of WIndows.

Eventually Nick managed to track the image back to the Corbis library, and in turn to the photographer, Peter Burian. With a little coaxing, Peter eventually remembered that he took the photo in the village of Kilbride, near his home in Milton, Ontario.

Of course once we had the address, we managed to find the exact tree-lined path and barn in a couple of minutes - thanks to Google Maps

And although these particular trees are still green, there’s thousands in this area that have started to turn a fantastic shade of orange!

Via Kottke.org.

Cockburn Island is a ‘ghost’ island in Ontario, which despite the apparent signs of life (there’s a small town and marina) has an official population of zero. The 1996 census listed a population of just two, but both people had left by 2001, making this the least populated incorporated municipality in Canada.

Some of these abandoned houses are supposedly still used as holiday homes, but what interests me if the makeshift airport to be found deep in the forest. It’s evidently still in use but I’ve found no mention of the airport around the internet. Most websites say that the marina is the “only way of getting on the island”, but it’s clearly not. If you asked me, an abandoned island would be the perfect place for an evil empire to keep its headquarters…

Thanks: Matt Blum & Taylor

Here’s a neat trick - this is a satellite photo of the great lakes, the largest fresh water lakes in the world etc, etc.

Now if you click to the great lakes and them zoom in step-by-step you’ll arrive here:

which are the tiny-great lakes! Cool, huh?

Thanks: Tristan

Quick, somebody fetch Neo, as it would appear that The Matrix is leaking into Canada.

Thanks to nousagi and Mark.

Another great farm maze here, this one is west of Toronto in Canada. I’ve rotated the image in thumbnail so you can make it out. It shows a farm, with barn and silo and wee tractor pulling a trailer at the bottom. Cheekily, there is also a URL which I worked out to be www.downeysfarm.on.ca.

Thanks: Shaun Hill

The City Hall of Toronto has two towers of different heights, each a semicircle that from above looks a lot like a boomerang. You may also recognise the building as the headquarters of the Umbrella corporation in the film Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

Thanks: Craig Pitman & Ian

Parliament Hill is the seat of power for the Government of Canada. The white dome to the north is covering the Library of Parliament which is currently being restored. The library was built in 1876 and is the only part of the parliament that survived a fire in 1916.

To the front of the building you can see the shadow cast by the Peace Tower, a memorial to those Canadians who died in World War I.

More info and Pictures

Thanks: Dean, Corwin, Bob Wong, Greg Small, Don Campbell, Pat Suwalski, Joe Tremblay, Zibblsnrt, Ivan M, velusip, MatB, Dilip Andrade, Dmitri, Joe Dawson, Fernando, Nick Mahon & Quinn Kuiken