Originally, the site of L'Assomption was known as "Le Portage" because it straddled a portage path used as a shortcut across the quasi-peninsula made by the winding course of the river.

Once we were off the main trail and onto the portage route, the only tracks in the snow we saw were our own.

This scenic trail is part of the historic portage that early travelers used to traverse around Kakabeka Falls.

It includes a park, two visitor parking lots, a former military cemetery, the remnants of a portage path, and a British guard house.

During the paleohistoric era, the area was of strategic importance for Indigenous peoples as it was an inevitable portage path near the rapids and Chambly Basin.

Frequently used by the First Nations as a portage road in order to avoid the Lachine Rapids, boulevard LaSalle is the oldest thoroughfare in Verdun's history.

One such astrolabe, found in 1867 on an old portage route near what is now Cobden, Ontario, was long thought to have belonged to the famed explorer himself.

Following the loss after the American Revolution of the Niagara River’s east bank, a new portage around Niagara Falls was established in the 1780s with Queenston its northern terminus.