The Towns and Cities of Northern Ontario
Ontario - Algoma Country
For centuries the area was loved by the Ojibwa people because it was simply overrun with wild game and fish (some things don't change much with time). Logging, and later uranium mining, brought great prosperity and growth to this community. Today has become a popular and peaceful retirement village and true vacation paradise.
is a small modern city with good shopping and amenities. You should start your visit with a drive round the Deer Trail, a 120 km driving tour with lots of stops along the way to inform you of the history, geology, and natural life of the area. Of course the scenery along this drive is the real reason it's worth the gas money. This is a really beautiful area, and that's saying something in a province with the kind of natural beauty we are so privileged to have around us.
offers many things for a vacationing family to do. There are several museums, some of the best hiking trails offered anywhere, kayaking or canoeing, windsurfing, and beaches. All offered almost within the city itself! And as always in the North, there's great fishing, hunting, boating, snowmobiling, skiing and camping everywhere you look.
also hosts a number of events and festivals, all year round, that are entertaining and interesting to participate in. Ojibwa craft, history, and culture is very much in evidence and offers a window into the very recent past of this area.
Just west or north of town the Mississagi River scenery will take your breath away. If this landscape does not swell your heart and give you a feeling that you've become a part of something grand you're half dead already.
As you turn north onto and begin the drive into there's a sense that you are leaving something behind. There's a quiet that begins to descend, a tingling sense of history moving closer. In the town itself the mining legacy is very much in evidence. The town is not a picturesque town, but it is an interesting place.
Just minutes of walking into the bush will take you quickly into another time and place and give you a taste of what this area would have been like only short decades ago. On a good day you will startle deer, see beaver building their dams, eat scads of sun warmed berries, and breath deep of a time not so far gone after all.
