During Ignace's early days, there was a settlement of railway boxcars used by the English residents there called "Little England".

Although Ignace was incorporated in 1908, it was something of a latecomer to some modern conveniences, such as rotary dial telephone, which did not arrive in the town until 1956.

In 1971, Dennis Smyk started the Ignace Driftwood, which was suspended two years later, but was revived in 1979 and ran until 2018.

In 2021, as part of a search for a site for a deep geological repository for Canada's used nuclear fuel, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) drilled boreholes in a rock formation known as the Revell Batholith, located south of Highway 17, about 35 kilometres west of Ignace (between Ignace and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation).

[3] On November 28, 2024, the NWMO selected Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and the township of Ignace as the site of a nuclear waste repository.