North to Canada! Part Two

In more than 30 fields in Ontario, "78% of Canada's gold" was mined in 1932 with an output of approximately $73,000,000.  Previously, in 1883, nickel ore was accidentally found when a road worker noticed red mud. Soon thereafter, a process was perfected using nickel to harden steel.  This resulted in greatly increased nickel production.  The mines of Sudbury, Ontario, supplied over 85% of the world's supply in 1932.

In 1903 another accidental find was cobalt-silver deposits.  This was followed by yet another gold rush to Porcupine, Ontario in 1909 and then one in Kirkland Lake, Ontario in 1912.

The author, Frederick Simpich, took another train ride on the "Polar Bear," a "tri-weekly accomodation train . . . we call it tri-weekly . . . because it goes up one week and tries to get back the next."  On this train were "miners, cooks, hunters, guides, Indians, missionaries, trappers - but no tourists as yet," (p. 160).

All the tall tales are interesting.  One guide talked about eating moose meat.  "We've a saying up here that the only way to cook bull moose is to boil it with a few rocks in the pot.  When the rocks get soft, you can bite the meat," (p. 161).

In 1932 progress was coming to Ontario's northern-most reaches: the Indians were using "outboard motors on their canoes," (p. 164).  "Dogs are still used for inspection and mail trips," (p. 165).

One innovation was a schoolroom in a train car.  "Population is sparse, towns few and far between in parts of northwest Ontario; so those rolling schoolrooms, moved on schedule, visit points along the line most convenient to children," (photo caption, p. 166).The children come to the train on snowshoes.

In addition to mining, the wheat crop in Ontario is colossal.  It is sent to Europe by the trainload.  Ontario's University of Toronto was the site of one of the world's most important discoveries in that era, insulin. "In a daring experiment, young Dr. Lloyd, of the University of Western Ontario, stopped his own heartbeat by injection of a certain drug, in order to prove that calcium chloride would start the heart to working again," (p. 177).

For the highest money value, "the making of paper is Canada's chief trade . . . the top year for this was 1929,at the peak of newspaper advertising, Sunday papers often ran 100 pages or more," (p. 183). In the north were newspaper routes pulled by dogsleds.

Mr. Simpich holds an unbridled enthusiasm for the area: "Unfaltering Ontario - the heart of Canada, robust member in the British family of nations! . . . Walk, ride, or fly around it and talk with its people.  Nothing thwarts or baffles them.  Their motto might be "Ontario can do it."  That is your last thought, as you ride through the under-river tunnel dug from Canada to Detroit," (p. 183).