The former lakebed forms the modern Clay Belt, an area of fertile land.

One hypothesis is that a weakening ice dam separating it from Hudson Bay broke, as the lake was roughly 250 m (820 ft) above sea level.

A comparable mechanism produced the Missoula floods that created the channeled scablands of the Columbia River basin.

It is also not conclusively known whether there were one or more pulses, and the route the water took to reach Hudson's Bay has not been determined.

[3][4] The draining of Lake Ojibway is a possible cause of the 8.2-kiloyear event, a major global cooling that occurred 8,200 years BP.