May 11 Temagami to Timmins, ON

It’s an absolutely gorgeous morning, sunny and clear blue skies. Coffee on the balcony this morning. We haven’t done much camping yet. We rather made a bit of a miscalculation on dates for this part of the trip. None of the provincial parks and only a very few private campgrounds are open before May 19th, the start of the ‘Long weekend’ here in Canada. Even the campgrounds in upstate NY weren’t open when we left.

Our destination today is Timmins Ontario where we will spend 3 nights with family, my husband’s sister, a niece and a nephew.

After leaving the beautiful lakes and rivers north of Temagami, there is an expanse of rich agricultural farmland. It’s somewhat of a surprise. Lots of logging as well.

There is a small provincial park near Englehart that has a beautiful water falls. It’s not open for the season yet and it’s quite a hike to the falls from the road so we didn’t quite make it this time. The last time we were here was in 1997 (in the fall for those of you who pay attention to foliage) and I was able to download a photo from my cloud storage. I also have one of me taken here with our eldest daughter as a baby on my back!

We stopped in Kirkland Lake where my husband’s parents lived for almost 40 years. They owned a hardware store and lived in town and then a restaurant out on the highway. They moved to a log cabin that had been built in the 1920s on Lake Kenogami. It had its own interesting history. Our daughters loved coming up here as children.. lots of canoeing, sailing, hiking with grandpa; blueberry picking and subsequent jam making with grandma. It was a good life.

Canada is rich in mining resources and northern Ontario is no exception. From here on in we will be traveling through mining country: copper (Timmins), gold (Kirkland Lake and Virginiatown which at one time was the largest gold producer in the British Empire), nickel (Sudbury), silver, zinc, amethyst. The gold was discovered when they were laying the railway. My room mate in my second year of University came from Virginiatown which is just east of Kirkland Lake towards Quebec.

Northern Ontario is a primary geographic and quasi-administrative region of the Canadian province of Ontario, the other primary region being Southern Ontario. Most of the core geographic region is located on part of the Superior Geological Province of the Canadian Shield, a vast rocky plateau located mainly north of Lake Huron (including Georgian Bay), the French River, Lake Nipissing, and the Mattawa River.

It constitutes 88 percent of the land area of Ontario, but with just 780,000 people, it contains only about six percent of the province’s population. The climate is characterized by extremes of temperature, with very cold winters and hot summers. The principal industries are mining, forestry, and hydroelectricity.

Northern Ontario has had difficulty in recent years maintaining both its economy and its population. Under the staples thesis of Canadian economic history, Northern Ontario is a “hinterland” or “periphery” region, whose economic development has been defined primarily by providing raw natural resource materials to larger and more powerful business interests from elsewhere in Canada or the world.

Kirkland Lake, ON

The community name was based on a nearby lake which in turn was named after Winnifred Kirkland, a secretary of the Ontario Department of Mines in Toronto. Miss Kirkland never visited the town, and the lake that bore her name no longer exists because of mine tailings.

BTW… There is no lake here or at least not much of one, it was buried by mine tailings … my husband’s parents moved here in the mid 60s just before we were married. This is not ‘home’ for him although it was for his younger siblings who attended both elementary and high school here.

Kirkland Lake was built on gold, but it is equally well known for producing world-famous hockey players. Indeed, legendary hockey broadcaster Foster Hewitt called Kirkland the town that made the NHL.

The main street was called the mile of gold because it was once paved, by accident, with tailings from the mine that still had gold in it. When we first started visiting here, there were several gold mines still in operation and mine heads and overhead conveyers / aerial bucket lines crossed the main drag. It also had a lot of bars!!

Notable people: Quite a few entertainers come from this area including country and western singer Shania Twain who is from Timmins and Alan Thicke – actor from Growing Pains and composer of TV theme songs Facts of Life and Different Strokes is from Kirkland Lake.

Timmins, ON

Timmins is a city in northeastern Ontario, Canada, located on the Mattagami River. The city is the fourth-largest city in the Northeastern Ontario region with a population of 41,145 (2021).The city’s economy is based on natural resource extraction, and is supported by industries related to lumbering, and to the mining of gold, zinc, copper, nickel and silver. Timmins serves as a regional service and distribution centre. The city has a large Francophone community, with more than 50% bilingual in French and English.