Paul Bunyan slept here. Seriously!

Show us a place where a United Empire Loyalist crapped and we'll show you an official historic site.

So where, asks Dr. Dieter K. Buse, is the official historic site honouring the magnificent six-foot, seven-inch muscular lumberjack Joe Muffraw from Mattawa?

Buse is a professor of history at Laurentian University.

He is also co-author, with retired Laurention U professor Graeme S. Mount) of the soon-to-be-released book, Come on Over!: Northeastern Ontario A to Z.

Big Joe Muffraw was the inspiration for Paul Bunyan, Buse told a group of history fans at Algoma University last week.

He said Muffraw once paddled all the way from Ottawa to Mattawa all in one day and that was just one of his many exploits.

Buse is seen in this SooToday.com photograph with last week Algoma University History Society President Colin Elder.

"Some aspects of Northeastern Ontario have been forgotten. We don't get our stories told," Buse said. "They've stolen our voices."

He and Mount hope to shine some light on some almost-forgotten Northeastern Ontario stories with their book.

It began as a research project at Laurentian University and morphed into a journey through time for Buse and Mount.

They used what students had put together to guide them to the richest historical finds

At each location, librarians, museum curators and families opened their collections, shared their documents and told their stories.

The new book includes the fact that Canada's first female mayor, Mrs. Barbara Hanley, was elected in the Northeastern Ontario town of Webbwood in 1936.

And that Dr. Saint-Firmin (S. F.) Monestime became Canada's first black mayor when the people of Mattawa elected him to office in 1964.

Buse maintains there should be national historic sites at Algoma Mills, Moose Factory, Cobalt, Timmins and Sudbury, in addition to the ones in Sault Ste. Marie and on St. Joseph Island.

"They're looking at history from the wrong perspective," he said. "When explorers first came to Ontario, it was from the north, from the James Bay area."

Everything south of Northeastern Ontario was considered "New Ontario."

"We're under-represented." Buse said. "Why? Because we were and still are very very important."

The book is expected out in the spring and holds 250 pages of colourful stories about Northeastern Ontario with 80 black and white illustrations and a colour insert.

A five-year university history department project, from 2000 to 2005, yielded eight enormous binders of information, but nobody wanted to pull it together, Buse said.

"We always thought someone should put it together as a guidebook," he said.

In 2007, after finding similar books during a trip to the Caribbean, Buse and Mount decided they were the someones to do it.