A Yankee in the Canadian Bush -- Red Lake in 1960

Shearn's Store, as seen across the narrows from camp, was moved to the town of Red Lake

The store was frequented by tugboats. Today only the dock crib remains underwater

Chapter 5

“Where is everybody?”

We were on the Trans-Canada Highway, Hwy. 17, between Sault Ste. Marie and Wawa, Ont., and we had yet to see another vehicle.

It was mid-September, 1960. We were travelling in two cars – Mom, Dad and I in a station wagon pulling a box trailer, and my sister, Sandi, and her new husband, Cliff, in another car. We were bound for our new life at Red Lake, Ont.

En route on the Pickerel River

The morning had started with a 10-mile boat ride up the Pickerel River, near Parry Sound. Mom and Dad had sold their cabin at the Pickerel River CNR river crossing and were going to use the proceeds to make a down payment on a remote fishing and hunting lodge called Bow Narrows Camp which Dad and a friend, Milt Young, had found in May.

Dad had loved the place, especially the location; Milt not so much. He and his wife, Carol, subsequently bought a camp on an island in Lake of the Woods. Bow Narrows Camp was a “fixer-upper” which appealed to Dad. Milt wanted a “turn-key” operation. They stayed good friends.

It was getting dark and we had yet to come to a town on Hwy. 17. We stopped beside a small lake where we got a pail of water and pitched our two tents right on the shoulder of the road. As we ate our supper cooked over an open fire, we speculated as to whether the road might be closed up ahead. It had only been open for a couple of weeks. The brand-new gravel highway was breathtaking for its views of Lake Superior

After blowing up our cheap plastic air mattresses, we laid down in our summer sleeping bags and quickly went to sleep.

Paul Stupack and brother, Bill, hunted for the mines

At dawn the next day we were awakened by a transport truck heading south. The road was open after all!

Two days later, after passing through the cities of Port Arthur and Fort William (now Thunder Bay) we headed up the Red Lake Road which Dad had told us was as wild as the Alaskan Highway.

We had not gone far when Mom called out, “Look, an elk!”

Actually, it was a moose, a big bull, and the first we had ever seen.

Awhile later, another creature, right in the middle of the road.

“Another moose, I mean, no, a deer,” Mom said.

It was a woodland caribou.

Then another big animal.

Mom hesitated. “Well, it’s not a moose or a caribou, and it’s not a deer either.”
It was a horse, a draught horse that probably had strayed from a logging outfit but the sight of it was totally unexpected on the wilderness road.

The town of Red Lake, when we finally got there, resembled something out of a Robert Service poem. Red Lake Road, or Hwy. 105, ended on Howey Street. Many stores along it had false fronts. There were lots of native people walking on the sidewalks or sitting around the outside of the hotel. The native ladies wore long dresses with leggings and many carried babies in tikanagans or back boards. Lots of the men were dressed in buffalo-plaid wool shirts. Black rubber boots, with the tops turned down, was the most common footwear for men and women.

Out on the bay, floatplanes were landing and taking off left and right, filling the air with the roar of their engines. There were several charter airways clustered along the waterfront. Hunters in red wool shirts and red-and-black plaid pants were loading their gear into a variety of floatplanes. One of the most common was the big mustard-yellow Norseman, a plane that was especially loud on takeoff.

There was even a biplane on floats, a Gipsy Moth, which was a prospector’s private plane. Like the Norseman it was fabric-covered but unlike the spiffy commercial craft the biplane was covered in what looked like black BandAids. It was electrician’s tape that the owner used to cover tears in the fabric.

There was a fish-packing plant on the waterfront where wooden boxes were filled with whitefish and walleye, covered in ice and destined for markets in the big cities.

Cars and trucks hurried along the narrow main street while pedestrians, many of them obviously intoxicated, would nonchalantly walk right in front of the moving vehicles. Dogs ran about freely. Ravens sat on the rooftops.

Everybody, it seemed, was laughing.

What a wonderful, bustling place and it was our new home town!

…to be continued

Other postings in this series:

Prologue

Rough Draft

Bad Ice

Why Here? 

A Gold Mine

Talking Bill into Selling