June 28 Kenora, ON to Fort Frances, ON

Breakfast was outside again overlooking LotW on our little ‘deck’. We sat in the sunshine enjoying our morning coffee. Good thing too because that was the last of the sun until dinnertime.

It poured rain just after we left the campsite all the way to Fort Francis through Sioux Narrows. This is sport fishing country.

It stopped raining by noon hour just long enough for us to find a nice restaurant for lunch and go for a walk before it started raining again.

Fort Frances is a border town with a bridge across Rainy River to International Falls,MN. Rainy River / Rainy Lake certainly lives up to its name.

Interesting note: every border crossing into the United States from Ontario is either over or under water (there is a tunnel going into Detroit). Given the immense size of Ontario it’s hard to believe isn’t it? And Ontario only borders 3 U.S. states: Minnesota, Michigan and New York with Manitoba on the west and Quebec on the east.

This was the one night we didn’t have a campsite reserved because the one in town was on a first come, first served basis. Given the miserable weather and the not-so-great looking facilities in the campground we opted for a motel for the first time since leaving Cochrane, ON many weeks ago. We found a nice one overlooking the bay along the river. Checking in was interesting. There was an unmanned lobby with a bank of little lock boxes and a telephone number. We had to call / text the number, reserve the room and pay for it. Once the credit card went through, one of the lock boxes released a key. The service was run out of the U.S. Is this the future of hotel service?

We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and walked down the street for a lovely dinner of local caught Walleye with enough left over for dinner tomorrow night.

The sun was out for a bit after dinner and we had a nice stroll along the river. We can’t complain about the weather. It’s the first time since we left home that we had all day rain and is keeping the air pollution from the forest fires away.

Fort Frances is a town in, and the seat of, Rainy River District in Northwestern Ontario, Canada.

Located on the international border with the United States where Rainy Lake narrows to become Rainy River, it is connected to International Falls, Minnesota by the Fort Frances–International Falls International Bridge.

Border crossing… that messy lumber mill is on the U.S. side in International Falls, MN. The mills in Fort Frances were dismantled several years ago.

The Hallett. The Hallett was used extensively in hauling logs until 1974. During an average year, the Hallett made twenty round trips of one hundred miles each. It hauled 70,000 to 90,000 cords of wood a year in average tows of 4-5,000 cords of wood that were a mile in size. Modernization of woodland operations and environmental concerns led to the demise of the lake drive. It became more economical to use a pulp truck, carrying 40 cords per load to bring logs for paper production.

Radar / Lookout Tower on Rainy River near Sorting Gap Marina. For years, the river was the site of booms of logs in the area of the marina to supply the local lumber mills. The Sorting Gap was used by the river men to sort the logs for entry on the green chain into the mills.

Fort Frances was the first European settlement west of Lake Superior and was established by French Canadian Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye, first commander of the western district. In 1731, he built Fort Saint Pierre near that spot as support for the fur trade with native peoples.

In 1817, following the War of 1812 and the redefinition of borders between Canada and the United States, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) built a fort here. In 1830 HBC Chief Factor John Dugald Cameron named the fur trading post after Frances Ramsay Simpson, the 18-year-old daughter of a London merchant.

The main employer was a pulp and paper mill established in the early 1900s.

On December 13, 2014, Tim Hortons filmed a commercial in Fort Frances. The commercial, which dubs Fort Frances “one of the coldest places in Canada”, was shot at the local Tim Hortons. In the days leading up to the filming, yarn was seen covering trees, benches, etc. Workers had spent the night covering the interior of the restaurant with yarn and building a giant toque (a toque is the traditional/iconic Canadian knitted hat) on the roof. For the day, the coffee was free.

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