Heading North in Ontario

Our Norwegians friends have left and Jackie and I are on the road again. Our first stop was the parking lot next to the Walmart Supercentre in Barrie. We stocked our refrigerator with all the usual groceries we would need for the trek north through Ontario.

Quite a few years ago, we had a look at Friday Harbour near Barrie. At the time, the harbour had been excavated and they were just about ready to allow water from Lake Simcoe to flood it. Since we are now members of the Freedom Boat Club, which has several boats at Friday Harbour, we thought we would drive over to see how the Friday Harbour Resort development had turned out.  The resort is now a complete community with restaurants, small stores, docks and of course, boats. Next time we are home in the summer we hope to take one of the boats from Friday’s Harbour into Barrie for a couple of hours and then just enjoy Lake Simcoe for a while. We used to take our boats onto Lake Simcoe but that was a long time ago now.

With our refrigerator packed, we headed for Sudbury to have a look at the Big Nickel. Jackie wasn’t much interested in touring yet another mine. She figures she’s seen enough mines to last her a while. So I went on the tour by myself.

A lot has changed in Canadian mining since I worked in a coal mine in 1970. Some of the things that really struck me were:

• Pollution is no longer dealt with by simply building ever-taller smokestacks.
• Hybrid and fully electric machines now operate underground.
• Some of those machines are completely autonomous.
• Every worker and every piece of mobile equipment has an RFID tag so operators in the control room always know where they are.
• LED strip lights illuminate the mine. In an emergency, the lights change colour and pulse in sequence to guide miners toward the nearest escape route.

Jackie and I spent a few hours at Science North in Sudbury, where many of the exhibits are geared toward children. While there I had the opportunity to lie down on a bed of nails. The nails were very sharp. It was quite an interesting sensation when I pushed the button and the nails lifted me about an inch into the air, leaving my entire body suspended on those sharp points. Even now, I’m not entirely sure why none of them penetrated my delicate underside. Perhaps I wasn’t as heavy as I thought, or maybe my backside is tougher than it looks.

While wandering through the exhibits at Science North, we came across an enclosure where an attendant was feeding a porcupine. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one up close before, so I found it quite fascinating. The gate to the enclosure was standing open, making it look as though the porcupine could simply wander away whenever it pleased. It showed absolutely no interest in doing so.

The porcupine was obviously quite accustomed to being hand-fed. It slowly used its little “hands” to accept vegetables, carefully selecting the ones it liked while politely rejecting the rest. As I watched, it occurred to me that perhaps porcupines don’t actually scamper at all. Every movement was slow and deliberate. On the other hand, if it ever did decide to wander off, I’m not quite sure how anyone would persuade it to come back without getting themselves thoroughly spiked.

The second-largest lake in the world located entirely within a city’s boundaries is Ramsey Lake in Sudbury. We thought it would be nice to ride our e-bikes around the lake. It was. And every now and then we even got to see the lake.

Our next stop north was Bruce Mines on our way to Sault Ste. Marie. We stayed at a “Boondockers Welcome” in Bruce Mines which was quite the treat because they provided 50 amp service, and access to town water and sewer. We arrived on a Sunday and the our host took us for a tour of the gravel pit where he worked. The gravel from this pit is very hard, and therefore well suited for heavily travelled road and railway use where limestone gravel would simply crumble and turn to dust. Most of the gravel from the Bruce Mines pit is shipped, literally by ship, to the USA.

From Bruce Mines we headed north to Sault Ste Marie where we set up camp in the Gateway Casino parking lot after calling ahead to make sure they were okay with it. The casino was central to all the attractions in the city. It was a great location. Sault Ste. Marie is a really beautiful city, with flowers everywhere people are likely to stroll. They also have an excellent cycling route called the Hub Trail. The trail is lined with bear-proof garbage cans, which does give one pause, since we don’t travel with bear spray. Fortunately, we encountered only cyclists and joggers.

While on our bikes we stopped by the Bushplane Museum, which included exhibits and videos on water bombers and aerial firefighting. This felt extremely relevant with Canada’s current forest fires. We were surprised to discover that the museum also had a separate exhibit featuring a variety of insects, including tarantulas, stick insects, and the amazing leaf insect perched on Jackie’s arm. If you spotted one of these in the forest, you’d never realize it wasn’t just another leaf.

The St. Mary’s River separates Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (or “the Soo,” as everyone seems to call it). Lake Superior sits about nine metres higher than Lake Huron, so ships have to use locks to travel between them.

We took a very informative lock tour. These locks are nothing like the ones on the Trent-Severn Waterway. The original Canadian lock opened in 1895 and was the first electrically operated lock in the world. Today, however, it is much too small for the giant freighters that travel the river, some of which are nearly 300 metres long.

Although there are three working locks at the Soo, they operate in parallel rather than in series. That means ships only pass through one lock to be raised or lowered the full nine metres. Only one of those locks is large enough to handle the biggest freighters.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is currently building a fourth lock because the economic consequences of losing, even temporarily, the existing large lock would be enormous. Assuming funding continues, they hope to have the new lock in service by 2030.

About 10 kilometres north of Sault Ste. Marie we stopped at Minnehaha Falls on Crystal Creek. A very nice steel walkway follows the falls about halfway to the top. If you want to go any farther, and apparently we did, you have to scramble over rocks and assorted tripping hazards. I’m still not sure why we had to go higher, but once we reached the top we decided it probably wasn’t wise to climb back down the way we’d come. After a bit of searching we found a sign pointing to a bike trail that also led back to our car. We decided to follow it to the parking lot.

As it turned out, you would need to travel at actual biking speeds to stay ahead of the mosquitoes. It was a two-kilometre hike back to the car. Three days later Jackie is still rubbing anti-itch cream on her arms and legs. I think the mosquitoes considered us an all-you-can-eat buffet.

A few hours north of the Soo we stopped at a blueberry farm near Wawa. The farm provides a parking area for campers, without amenities, through the “Harvest Hosts” program. If you stay at Algoma Wild Blueberry Farm and Winery, you’re expected to buy some blueberry or strawberry wine. Clearly, this was not a hardship for Jackie.

We had a nice chat with the owner while buying our wine. He has 500 acres of blueberries and explained how he harvests them using a machine that gently rakes the berries off the bushes every second year.

Right beside the farm we found the beautiful waterfall pictured above. This picture was a great, maybe scary, test. I took the picture of Jackie with the bikes and Jackie took the picture of me with the bikes. She then asked ChatGPT to take the two pictures and put both of us in one picture and this is the result. I think it looks perfect. In this case we were both together so it really isn’t “fake” but I could have been anywhere. You have to be so careful these days.

We visited a beach on Lake Superior that was painted by various Group of Seven members.  I thought it would be a good idea to go for a swim (OK not really). Lake Superior is the largest fresh water lake in the world. It holds more water than the other 4 great lakes combined. So much water that it never really gets very warm. I settled for dipping one foot in.

We have had a great time so far in Northern Ontario. We had drinks with a couple from British Columbia who we hope to look up when we finally get there. We are now off to stay at a marina in Nipigon and then on to Thunder Bay.