Miles Meets Ontario (Part One)

With our trusty mascot, Miles the Moose, leading the way from his perch in the middle of our dash, I was unprepared for the vastness of  Northern Ontario!

Kenora, just barely inside the province from the western border, was our first stop.  So beautiful!  We had arrived late in the day and been given a campsite overlooking the lake in Anicinabe Campground.  It had been a long day of travelling…not so much in terms of distance travelled but because we had made numerous stops to explore and the route we had chosen for most of the day had not been in the best condition.  The last few kilometres, however, had been on the Trans Canada highway and at that point it was merely a slight improvement!  Somehow we had expected better!   Regardless, we were ready to call it a day and looked forward to seeing Kenora in the next day or two.

Caterpillars were undoubtedly causing a huge problem in Kenora. They were crawling all over the campsite and had completely cleared the leaves off the trees by the lake making our view of Lake of the Woods much clearer.  We prepared dinner over our first campfire since leaving home and then settled into our lawn chairs to watch the sunset over the lake. It was a lovely clear evening and we were looking forward to exploring the area the next day.

We woke the next morning to a cold rainy day.  Not at all what we had expected.  So, because we would undoubtedly have to return home through Kenora in September, we decided to move on and make this a stop on the way back.

Leaving Kenora, the landscape started to change.  Red and black rock cliffs, lakes and thick spruce and birch forest provided fabulous vistas around each corner.  Granite quarries in the area of Vermillion Bay are likely operating at top capacity with the resurgence of granite in the housing industry.  Every few kilometres we see hunting and fishing lodges and road signs depicting a moose warning us of the dangers of driving at night in this area. How exciting it would be to see a moose along the shores of one of these lakes but it didn’t happen!

Dryden would be our stop for the night.  We had a minor repair that needed done on the van and Dryden RV offered to help us out first thing next morning.  So we set off to explore the city.  For any hockey fans reading this, Dryden is the home of Chris Pronger of the Anaheim Ducks who played with Team Canada and brought home a gold medal in both the 2002 and 2010 Olympics.  They’re pretty proud of their boy!

Dryden is situated on Wabagoon Lake…love that name….which we walked around until we were stopped by rain.  The railroad came through this area in the 1800’s giving access to the forests and it wasn’t long before the logging industry brought the people in.  Saw mills and pulp mills grew and the town grew.  In recent years, however, the mills have seen a huge decrease in production and a facility that used to employ over 1200 people in the 60’s is now only employing about 200.  Only the pulp portion of the Domtar mill is operating now  and the town’s survival has shifted to tourism in the form of charter fishing and hunting.  We spoke to a retired employee of the mills and he was sad to see the demise of a once vibrant part of the community.

Our van repair was completed early the next day and we were on our way.  The overcast skies and drizzly rain meant less stops today but this highway would be travelled on our return so we weren’t too worried about missing things.  We stopped at a little town called Ignace, named after Ignace Mentour, an Iroquois guide from Montreal who was hired by the Hudson Bay Company as a guide for the company’s governor, George Simpson.  Then the railway came through and a granite quarry was established which of course brought more people to the area.  Granite is still a big industry there.

Heading for Thunder Bay, we stopped for the night just west of the city at Kakabeka Falls.  Magnificent!  It was the original mountain portage linking the waterways of Lake of the Woods with Lake Superior when the canoe was the most efficient form of travel.  It is a must-see for anyone travelling through the area.  There are hiking trails and board walks with amazing views of the falls.  It makes me wonder how the early voyageurs could have loaded their canoes and all the contents and packed them across places like this!  Things that we do today for recreation are things they did for survival!

We arrived in Thunder Bay the next day, a quick visit with friends, and then an afternoon walk at Marina Park with its old 1905 CN Railway Station.  The sun made a brief appearance so we got some beautiful shots of the area.  Again, just passing through for now with plans to stay longer on our return.

By late afternoon we were on the road again.  We could not pass up a stop at the Terry Fox Memorial just east of the city commemorating the courage of the young man that set out to walk across Canada from east to west with a prosthetic leg in an attempt to raise awareness and promote cancer research.  He was forced to end his journey at this point when his cancer recurred.

Off again with Lake Superior to our right, the sun trying to make an appearance off and on.  Over a beautiful bridge at Nipigon, through the pretty little town of Schrieber, past little islands in the lake and a stop to see the Aguasabon Falls and the lighthouse near Terrace Bay and we finally arrived at Neys Provincial Park.  After seeing a black bear on the highway, we realized it was getting late for travelling and stopped for the night.

Neys had a beautiful wild beach, naturally littered with driftwood of all shapes and sizes and fine white sand. The sky was beginning to clear and the sunset was lovely.  The beach was virtually deserted and had an extremely tranquil quality to it.

After a saunter along the beach with our coffee in the morning, we discovered that our friends, Des and Vicki who were also travelling Canada, were in Sault Ste. Marie, a mere 450 km away.  We had originally planned to make one more stop before the Soo but decided to push on all the way to meet up with them for a day or two to compare notes…we were travelling much different routes and this may be the only time our paths would cross.

This part of Ontario is abundant with wildlife.  We had seen cranes, eagles, rabbits, foxes, a bear…but between Obatanga and Wawa we were thrilled to see a wolf crossing the highway.  That was by far the highlight of the drive!

The rocks in Wawa are among the oldest in Canada, dating back to the pre-Cambrian period and therefore making Wawa an area rich in all kinds of minerals, most notably gold and iron ore.  When the Klondike Gold Rush was occurring, minerals were also being discovered and mined in this area.  Wawa saw three gold rushes, each one lasting about ten years.  The most recent one was in the 1980’s.

We arrived in Sault Ste. Marie, which means Rapids of St. Mary, in pouring rain.  This is where Lake Superior and Lake Huron meet.  The four of us went out for dinner together.  By the time dinner was over the rain had ceased and we wandered all around the canal area watching big ships come in from Lake Huron on St. Mary’s River to enter the locks and get transported onto Lake Superior.

The next day was hot, sunny and humid.  The four of us spent the day together, visiting the Bush Plane Museum first. There we watched a 3-D film about fighting monster forest fires in the north as well as a short film about the famous bush plane, the Beaver, which was built in the 1960’s and still operates around the world where bush planes are needed.  In fact, when we were in Sydney, Ausralia a couple of years ago, we rode in one when we went on a harbour tour.

Vicki and I spent the afternoon at the Ematinger Museum and Clergue Blockhouse, brushing up on our history of the area.  Charles Ematinger was an independent trader from Switzerland with the Northwest Company in 1795 and later he became an agent for the HBC until he retired in 1828.  His house remains in the same spot and many artifacts have been recovered by archeologists in the area.  We found it very interesting.

After a full day we were on the road again, heading around the north shore of Lake Huron about 200km through pretty little beach towns to Chutes Provincial Park.

The falls here, or chutes, were at one time a means of transportation for getting logs from the forest to the booms at the bottom where they were sorted according to their markings and delivered to the various logging companies in the area.

Here the four of us would camp for two nights, soak up the sun that had finally emerged and share some meals.  We hiked to the falls, waded in the warm water, read books and chatted around late evening campfires before saying farewell and heading our separate ways, they going east toward Ottawa, us south toward London.

…..to be continued.