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The earliest Europeans came for the Hudson Bay Company who established a fur trading post on Big Missinabi Lake in 1777, about 50 miles north of Chapleau.
In 1885 the Canadian Pacific Railway was built through the Chapleau area. The C.P.R. chose this spot as a division point and that is how the town got started.
Chapleau's population has dropped from about 5,000 in the 1950s to the present of 2,350.
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