| Kesagami River | |
| Pushpin Map: | Canada Ontario |
| Pushpin Map Caption: | Location of the mouth of the Kesagami River in Ontario |
| Subdivision Type1: | Country |
| Subdivision Name1: | Canada |
| Subdivision Type2: | Province |
| Subdivision Name2: | Ontario |
| Subdivision Type3: | Region |
| Subdivision Name3: | Northeastern Ontario |
| Subdivision Type4: | District |
| Subdivision Name4: | Cochrane |
| Source1: | Unnamed lake |
| Source1 Coordinates: | 49.6803°N -80.3339°W |
| Source1 Elevation: | 300m (1,000feet) |
| Mouth: | Harricana River |
| Mouth Coordinates: | 51.1483°N -79.7794°W |
| Mouth Elevation: | 1m (03feet) |
| River System: | James Bay drainage basin |
| Tributaries Left: | Bodell River |
| Tributaries Right: | Lawagamau River, Seal River, Little Seal River, Shashiskau River, Little Kesagami River |
The Kesagami River is a river in northern Cochrane District in Northeastern Ontario, Canada.[1] It is part of the James Bay drainage basin, and is a left tributary of the Harricana River. The lower two-thirds of the river, from about Kesagami Lake and downstream for to its mouth, are part of Kesagami Provincial Park.[2]
The river begins at an unnamed lake in the Abitibi Uplands just west of Ontario Highway 652 and flows north to the large Kesagami Lake. It exits the lake at the northeast, continues north and descends rapidly to the James Bay Lowlands, where it takes in several tributaries before reaching its mouth at the Harricana River, just upstream of that river's mouth at James Bay.
From Kesagami Lake downstream, the river can be traversed as a canoe route. Since the river drops over to its mouth, whitewater canoeing is challenging, and extreme during spring conditions.
The entire course of the Kesagami River lies within the Hudson (James) Bay Lowland and, like all other streams in that region, it flows with a swift current in a channel cut through the marine clay deposits overlying limestone rocks of Paleozoic age. The banks are generally steep. The thickness of the overburden diminishes as the river nears its mouth, and in places it flows over beds of horizontal limestone. The Kesagami has few tributaries, and these are small because of the impervious nature of the clay through which they run.[3]
The greater part of its course, which is generally in a north-northeast direction, is through a muskeg country with mostly dwarf black spruce and tamarack trees. Second-growth timber consists chiefly of Banksian pine, poplar, and birch. Owing to the amount of moisture in the ground, trees in this region do not attain a greater average height than about 30feet, and have a maximum diameter of 4to in a growing period of between 100 and 150 years.[3]