A typical Newfoundland drive in ‘northern’ Ontario: rock, road and trees, water filling in the gaps. I skimmed the northern reaches of the Park. I kept a watchful eye for moose, deer, bear, fox, lynx and others who share the road with the motorists and semis.
“And the seasons they go round and round …” Joni’s repertoire fit the road as I rolled along. It seemed only a few years earlier I had taken a job as a research tech in St. John’s, now here I was heading the research program for the Northern Med School. The seasons had spun by and I wondered what fun lay ahead.
The towns moved by, Deux Rivière, Eau Claire, Corbeil, and Matawa.
Joni finished, I grabbed the next CD, “Little wheel spin and spin, big wheel turn around and around …” Buffy Ste. Marie, super companion for the road.
Big Goose statue in Wawa.
I stopped in North Bay to grab a teen burger and root beer. CBC was re-hashing the horrible shooting of three Mounties in Moncton, I wondered what ‘small town Northern Ontario’ had in store for me. Finally, the big Nickel was visible and I switched to city driving and my search for the Hampton Inn. Little did I know this and its sister hotel, the Homewood Suites, were to become my second home in the North. I checked in and went out for a stroll to see the cityscape.
Sudbury is a mining town. By the 50s and 60s it was so abused by the industry, the barren landscape had become a testing ground for the lunar rover. A wake-up call, the city had turned itself around with a massive re-forestation program, when I arrived in Sudbury I could see the outcome of that labour. Laurentian U on the edge of Ramsey Lake, with a lovely boardwalk around a mixture of wooded and residential areas, birds trilled above me and the trails meandered through a mix of evergreen and deciduous trees. I headed to Pluckers, across from the Hampton, for a beer and a burger.
My job spanned Northern Ontario and I had staff in Sudbury and Thunder Bay, a 1000 km apart. The next morning, I popped in to meet my team in Sudbury, Di, Carolyn and Jerome, and see the lab space. The laughter said it all, I would not regret my decision to uproot my life and head off on this solo adventure. I planned a longer visit later in the summer, for now it was a relief to have real people to go along with the names. I picked up my parking pass, saw my temporary office, checked in with the Dean’s office and by noon I was back on the road en route to Sault Ste. Marie.
On that first excursion across the land I hardly knew what to look for. Many small towns had become popular as seniors’ havens, cottage country with reasonable amenities, Elliot Lake, Blind River, Espanola. They had grown from their rich histories in mining to cozy communities along the Great Lakes and Highway 17. The names would soon roll off my tongue Spanish, Serpent River, Iron Bridge, Thessalon, Echo Bay, Bruce Mines, for now they passed me by as the afternoon ticked along.
