[4][5] In early 1911, a Cree fur trapper named Duncan Two-hearts set out from his trapline at Turtle Lake.

In addition to fur, Twohearts had a small bag full of rocks he had collected at Rice Lake, which he was going to show to a trader at Manigotagan, Manitoba, named Arthur Quesnel.

[4][5] The discovery of gold precipitated an era of prospecting in the Wanipigow River watershed and in the current-day area of Nopiming.

The area saw an influx of prospectors from Kenora and Winnipeg, who came in canoes, following the old travel routes of the Indigenous peoples—the Bird (Oiseau), the Manigotagan, and other rivers.

Situated on Rice Lake, the town was named after physician, surgeon and politician Edgar Douglas Richmond Bissett, a Member of Parliament from September 1926 until July 1930.