Blind River to Schreiber, ON

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Odometer: 40768km

This is the first day it has been cool enough to put on my leather pants since I left Saskatchewan at the start of the trip. Ever since then I’ve been wearing jeans. They provide some protection in a fall, but not like leather does, so wearing leather makes me feel a little more secure.

What a nice ride I had to Sault Saint Marie. The temperature was perfect, no cars to speak of, and a winding road that followed the Mississagi River for the initial part of the ride. I arrived at ‘The Sault’ (pronounced ‘soo’) before the crowds were up. It was Saturday, so everything was a bit slow. I like that about Saturday mornings.

The name Sault Ste. Marie started with Champlain giving it the name Sault (rapids) when his explorers returned with information about the raging river from the ‘Grans Lac’ (Lake Superior) connecting to ‘Mer Douce’ (Lake Huron). In 1668, Father Jacques Marquette constructed the first mission to the natives and he was the one who renamed the site Sault de Sainte Marie, in honour of the Virgin Mary. Believe it or not, this area was one of the first settled communities northwest of Quebec. It has attracted many, different ethnic groups to service all the resource industries and transportation of the region. I think it is a location that deserves more time than I had, and, if I travel east again, it will be on my list of places to revisit.

I had planned to have breakfast in The Sault, so I started my search in earnest for the ‘right’ place. My rules for searching in a place this size include it having to be close to the centre of the city, in an older area, and the street outside lined with parked cars. Earnie’s on Queen Street was such a place. It is a little cafe, holding about forty people with all services being provided by one, very efficient and very energetic waitress. If there were one of those reality shows about waitresses, she would be sure to win. The only place I could find to sit was at the coffee counter so she was able to handle my order on the move, as she had to go by me to get anything behind the counter. As she went flying by she checked if I wanted coffee, then, after serving others, stopped with her notepad. “What’ll you have honey?” Thank goodness I was ready to order.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one person handle so many customers and do it so well. “This is my thirty-first year here,” she told me while setting down the meal for the guy beside me. “No summer holidays in thirty-one years either. I’m not complaining, but this summer me and my husband are off to visit my sister in Orillia this afternoon. I’ll be back Monday, but I’m looking forward to the trip.” Off she went again as an order was announced from the kitchen. I never had a chance to talk to her after that. She was about 40 and pretty fit, and no wonder. Serving breakfast like she did every morning was like a workout with one of those fitness experts yelling at you.

The food was great, but not your low cholesterol version, which is why it tasted so good. There will be no lunch for me, and a simple salad for supper.

I looked around the downtown a little. I saw the train station where the Algoma Central Railway starts its tourist trip up the Agawa Canyon, but there was only the station and an empty track to see. The train trip starts later in the day so I missed the engine and rolling stock. I’ve talked to many who say it is a wonderful trip. Maybe one day I’ll do it. There is a bush plane air museum, which didn’t interest me much, and a nice water front for walking. All in all, I liked The Sault.

The weather channel on TV warned of storms coming through Thunder Bay today. Oh great. I wasn’t sure whether to rush to get to my next overnight spot before they came or make sure I saw the country. I decided on the latter, but set a goal to make Terrace Bay by supper so I could get to Thunder Bay with only a half day ride. Neighbours of ours in Calgary, Ron and Caddie, had invited me to come and stay with them for a day or so at their cottage near Thunder Bay, so I wanted to be sure to arrive there earlier in the day.

The ride along the shore of Lake Superior from Batchwater Bay to Wawa, through Lake Superior Provincial Park, was very nice. The were some incredible views of the lake from high view points and I took advantage of the beach parks to stop and look around. As it turned out, this was the highlight of the day. After Wawa the road heads inland and gets pretty tedious. If the Provincial Park part of the road was the nice bit, the next had some of the bad bits as far as scenery goes, with scrub pines, marshes, granite outcroppings, and generally inhospitable land. Putting the highway through this country must have been a challenge, but what a boon to Canadian transportation it must have been once completed. This part of the road must be very lonely in the middle of winter. Not a place you would want a breakdown.

At White River the sky ahead looked ominous, so I was proactive and put on my rain gear. This is usually a certain method to ensure the rain doesn’t hit, and it worked again. There was more water inside my rain gear than outside because of the humidity.

At Marathon the land became a bit more inhabitable, and small towns and farms started to appear. There were some great vistas looking out over Lake Superior, but, in most cases there was no place to stop the bike. In a car there would be no problem, but when the shoulder is rough, loose gravel that sharply slopes down to the ditch there is no way to quickly and safely park the bike, especially a heavy bike like mine. I did find one small park that gave a great view of a sweeping railway curve coming around a mountain and across a trestle - what a shot that would be with a steam engine chuffing along the line.

Terrace Bay was a bit of a disappointment with only three motels to service travellers. What put me off even more was that it was their Drag Car Racing event this weekend and the place was full of the characters that go for that sort of thing. All the power to them, but I left.

Just down the road is a town called Schreiber and I couldn’t have had a better stroke of luck than to end up there. I looked like a sleepy hollow, but had eight to ten motels, most of them more than half empty. It turned out that Schreiber is a railway town, so I set out to soak up what I could of its history and present state.

In the Nor-West Motel where I stayed, I got into a conversation with the owner who was a woman in her fifties with an eastern European accent that I guessed as Czech. She was surprised yet pleased that I identified her ethnic background. I told her I recognized the accent because I was a soccer referee and had refereed Czech teams in Calgary. I also told her about a young woman that I knew in London, England in 1968 who was a summer student there when the Russians came into Prague to put a tighter control on the country. She found herself trapped in Britain and didn’t know what had happened to her family. We talked some more about that time in Czech history and the motel owner told me some terrible stories of deaths in her family in those times that I won’t repeat here.

When we had that conversation, there were a couple of other friends of the motel owner sitting in the room. One of them told me she was of Finnish background, but had been born in Schreiber. She told me there are Finnish communities all around Lake Superior, but mostly at the western end. They came over from Finland to service the lumber industry before the start of the twentieth century, but their influence remains. I told her how fascinated I was to see that, directly across Lake Superior, at Marquette, Michigan, there was also a very large Finnish community. That didn’t seem to surprise her.

Walking around Schreiber gives me the same feeling I get when walking around the rundown and partially vacated towns on the prairies. There are some people that are still doing alright, and there are some businesses still active, but I get the feeling that their viability is finite, and in five years this place will be even less than what it is now. The pulp mills are closing all around here. Just last year the big pulp mill in Terrace Bay closed due to rising energy costs, or so they say. Many people have left for jobs in the west, leaving their homes intact, but nobody is present to look after them. The railway has been a consistent employer here, but it is a shadow of what it was during the heydays of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. There were many business boarded up or for sale. Figliomini and Sons seem to be succeeding though, and they do it all. If you believe their signs, they are the local Ford Dealer, Suzuki Dealer, Firestone Dealer, supply Shell Gas, and handle the Skidoo business. They certainly have figured out the art of hedging.

Being a railway buff, I bothered to find the old railway station and walk around the rail yard. The yard has thirteen tracks plus the main track, so it can be a busy place. About half of the yard had cars or engines on the tracks. There were large areas of land that obviously use to have tracks, but have been torn up to reduce maintenance costs. I went over to the station, which was a large brick and stucco building and typical of Central Canada stations. I wandered around looking for someone I could talk to about the rail business along the lake shore, but there was nobody about. At an open door I wandered in, calling out to see if anyone was around. Nobody answered. A large crew room with lockers as well as a big coffee room with many vending machines was inside the station, so there must be fair sized crews there during the day. Inside the old main office of the station, the ticket room and telegraph were gone, replaced with about six computer screens all displaying important looking stuff. I couldn’t believe there was nobody watching it.

I walked back to my motel via the subway under the tracks. Another motorcyclist exclaimed to me when I told him about the subway, “There is a subway in this town? I don’t believe it.” I understood.

Odometer at the end of the day: 41428km

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Photos

The morning drill
When there was a Tim's, I normally had a small coffee and tea buscuit, the rode on for a couple of hours before having a real breakfast. This was a typical morning scene, but this, in particular, is at Blind River with a view of Lake Superior.

Typical Lake Superior bay
It was early in the morning. There were people getting ready to go swimming and others packing up their kiyaks for a day trip. A beautiful setting and just one of many such places along the shore.

A not-so-nice bit
Typical inhospitable land on The Shield

The railway along Superior
It was cloudy and hazy, but that is Lake Superior in the distance.