My Latest Northern Ontario Back-Roads Adventure With The Bear

This is downtown Espanola, a mill town located just west of Sudbury, near the north shore of Lake Huron.  This town is the gateway to Manitoulin Island.

It’s other claim to fame is the paper will, which apparently spilled a bunch of toxins in the Spanish River back in the 80s and killed off tons of fish.  People still talk about it.

See this lake?  It’s pretty big…you almost can’t see the other side.

This is Lake Manitou, which is located on Manitoulin Island,  which itself is located in Lake Huron.

Which makes this lake the worlds largest freshwater lake, within a freshwater lake.

Which I think is pretty cool.

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Here’s Lake Huron itself, on Providence Bay on Manitoulin Island.     It was stinking hot…and the water was swimmable.  Just barely.

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This is Downtown Thessalon, on a Saturday night.

It just doesn’t get any better than this.

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Here’s Wawa (two hours North of the Soo).  I’ve blogged about it before.   This is an aerial view from the bush plane that returned me back from my fishing trip.

Just outside of Wawa is this old ski hill.

It boggles my mind…no matter how remote, or how small a town is…you can always find some kind of ski hill of some sort. Seems this was the thing to do in the 60′s and 70′s.

But now, as course, as you can see from the trees, it’s long since been abandoned.   A sign of prosperous times long since past.

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Next, is the town of Dubreuville.   This is your proverbial company town,  named after the lumber company which founded it. It’s on the end of a 30-km dead-end road,  Northeast of Lake Superior.

I wasn’t really excited about being here.   I just went to say I’d been.  Another place to tick off on the map.

I must admit, I’m a bit biased against the town.  They’re located south of the fishing lodge I like to go to, which is in a protected wilderness area.     But the Dubreuvillers apparently want to change that, and gain access to the lake with ATV trails and such.  They’ve been feuding with the lodges and the provincial government for years.

I have no sympathy for Dubreuville.   There are hundreds of miles of trails, and hundreds of other lakes in the area.  If they’ve already spoiled those areas with over-hunting and over-fishing, that’s their problem.    Don’t ruin the few remaining unspoiled areas.  Leave them alone,  I say.

Anyway, the town isn’t doing that great.  The only industry is the sawmill, which recently shut down because of lack of a lumber supply.

  You can already see the signs of decay (empty apartments, etc.).   This might become another ghost town, if things don’t pick up.

 

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I’ve also blogged about White River before, which  is the birthplace of Winnie the Pooh.    Junior Bear and I always stop and pay our respects at the Pooh statue.

White River is basically a railway town in the bush Northeast of Superior.   And it, too, has seen better days.

I wonder what it was like when this hotel was still running, or the S_andoni Bros. department store was still open?

Though I hear the town is starting to take off again.   They just got a contract for some air service to some fishing lodges, which means more people will be staying in the hotels there.  Tourism in the area is starting to grow.   I wish them well.

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Here’s the Michipicoten First Nation village, on the Northeast shore of Lake Superior, just outside of Wawa.

I like the bilingual signs…there were a whole bunch of the on the road, welcoming tourists.   It felt friendly.

At the end of the the village, there is a picnic/camping area right by Superior.   The signs indicate this as a “sacred place”.

Given the wilderness setting and the beauty of the place, I have to agree.

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Highway 101 crosses the Northeastern part of Ontario.

This is typical, when driving through Northern Ontario.    All you see are …trees, trees, trees….

And more trees…trees…trees.

(Just be careful not to hit a moose along the way!)

And then every hundred kilometers of so, you come across a town, like Foleyet (pop. ~ 200).

 The is another railway town, in the middle of the bush.

Downtown Foleyet, on Labour Day Monday:

(Not exactly a prime cottage country/tourist area).

 I wonder how long ago this burger/fries restaurant was open?

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After hours of  driving through the bush,  I finally hit my first “Big City”:   the town of Timmins (pop. 43,000).

It was a novelty to see a “real city”, with multiple traffic lights, a water tower, and “high-rise” buildings greater than four storeys.

Timmins’ claim to fame (aside from being the birthplace of Shania Twain) is it’s gold mining, which is still on-going.

You can also see old derelicts too… This is a boom-and-bust town.

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Heading home, I always like to stop at the Arctic Watershed:  the point at which the water drains into either the Great Lakes, or Hudson’s Bay.

Point of trivia:  the Arctic Watershed lies mostly in Canada, but it also includes parts of the States (mainly Northern Minnesota and North Dakota).

Aside from being of geological interest, the watershed has had historic significance, in delineating boundaries for the fur-trading industry…

I always feel sad heading south of the watershead, because it means I’m leaving the “North” and my vacation is ending and soon I’ll be home.

Even though home is still hundreds of km away and I won’t be getting in till midnight!…

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A Quick Weekend Road Trip with the Bear

This weekend, the Bear and I decided to do a overnight road trip.     Our destination was as far North as far as I could reasonably get, leaving Saturday and coming back at a decent time Sunday evening.

One of the first stops I took photos was Cobalt.

The town peaked about 100 years ago, when there was a big silver boom.

I think it’s always great when a town is named after a metal.

That’s a sure sign that it’s a happenin’ place.   Woo hoo!

Further north,  between New Liskeard and Kirkland Lake,  the Bear and I found a giant critter by the road.  (Can you spot the him? …the Bear, I mean.)

Seems it’s a mandatory by-law in Northern Ontario to have a giant critter every X-number of kilometers.

Though I question the relevance of the bison.  As far as I know, these animals had nothing to do with the development and settlement of Ontario.  The nearest wild bison is about 1500 km away.

But at least its legs were wrapped up in Christmas lights, which I found to be a nice touch.

Next, was one of my favorite stops…the Arctic Watershed

This is the dividing line, north of which all water flows into Hudson’s Bay.

I love crossing the watershed.   It makes me feel I’m getting way up North (even though we’re still not even at 49 degrees latitude).      But there aren’t many places in the lower 48 States like this, except parts of Minnesota, the Dakotas and a tip of Montana.

What’s somewhat surprising, is that the further north I went, the busier and more populated it become.

Parts further Southwest  like the Sudbury or the Soo are all rock and lakes.   But this stretch of Highway 11 is well-farmed with fairly large towns peppered along the way.  In some places, it hardly feels north at all.

We finally reached our destination target, which was Cochrane.

As you can see, it’s VASTLY different from downtown Cobalt.

Cochrane is close to the furthest North Highway 11 gets, before it veers west towards Kapuskasing,  Hearst and eventually dips back down towards  Thunder Bay.

Cochrane is only 49 degrees latitude,  hardly what you’d call the sub-Arctic.    It’s no worse than North Dakota, Idaho or Minnesota.

Hell, even Calgary is further north.

But the difference here, is that in this part of Ontario, Cochrane is the last town.

There’s nothing above Cochrane except some access roads to hydro dams,  logging roads,  and the occasional mining camp.

Even those rustic roads eventually end…and then you’re as north you can get by car (in this part of the continent, at least).

I’ve been there.   It’s a pretty awesome feeling, to be at what I call the End of the World.

(But that was on another trip, and that’s for another story).

Anyway, these is one  way you can get further North.   Cochrane is the Southern Terminus of the Polar Bear Express.    It’s a train that will take you across hundreds of miles of muskeg/swamp, until you get to Moosonee on James Bay.

(I didnt’ have time this weekend to do that…that will be on my to-do list…for another trip.)

But I did get a picture of the Bear with another giant Critter.

Cochrane really enjoys milking it’s “Polar Bear” status.    Though I suspect the nearest wild polar bear isn’t found within 500 miles of this place.

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On the way home, I decided to take 60-mile detour at Matheson and  take Highway 101 east toward the Quebec side.

One thing you’ll find on Northern Ontario back is lots of evidence of logging.     They manage to hide it quite well on the major routes where all the tourists drive,  but on the back-roads, sometimes they dont’ bother to try.

Next, was Rouyn-Noranda,  a town 500 km Northeast of Montreal.    It’s claim to fame is its big copper smelter.

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It was kind of a shock, to drive through 100 km of forest and lakes, to suddenly come across this dirty mill town that looks like it would better belong in the Rust-Belt down south.

I mean, how’d you like to have THIS in your back yard?

And judging from the Quebec flags flying around, I suspected this wasn’t exactly the type of town you’d want to go waving a Canadian flag around on July 1st.

In this case, I decided it would be best to NOT put the Bear in the middle of the street, and NOT to take a photo.

The drive home after that was rather uneventful, driving through several hours of boring farmland.    This part of Northwestern Quebec was just as boring as the Ontario side.    I felt I this could have been anywhere.

Ironically, it was within the last 90 minutes of my drive, that the forests and scenery began to look nice again, like the Canadian-Shield wilderness that I’m used to.

1300 km in two days.   Not bad.

Wonder what I’ll do NEXT weekend?