12 best Covid-friendly stops through northern Ontario

Barely an hour into our great expedition from Ottawa to western Canada, Bill rolled his eyes when I asked him to stop at the Champlain’s Astrolabe historical monument.

“We’ve got a long way to go, we can’t stop at every historical marker and we’ve seen this one before,” he remarked. I begged, pointing out that Samuel de Champlain used the astrolabe to find his way – just like we’re using Google Maps today. Stopping to pay tribute to the explorer was a fitting start to our trip, I contended.

Bill slammed on the brakes, turned in to a dirt road and bumped over some lumpy ground to get me close to the bronze plaque, which marks the general area where the astrolabe (used to determine latitude) was found in 1867. It’s assumed that Champlain lost it on June 7, 1613 when he was scouting the Ottawa River. How did he manage after that? If we lost our cell phone, we’d have to rely on (horrors!) paper maps alone!

Back on the road, Bill said we had to set some ground rules about what we would and wouldn’t stop for as we made our way through northern Ontario and across the prairies to Canmore and Kelowna to visit the two-thirds of our kids who live there.

We had already agreed to avoid cities and any congregations of people in small spaces, due to Covid restrictions and safety precautions. And I had agreed – a huge concession for me – to avoid museums. Yes, I confess that I’m a bit of a museum junkie! I don’t like breezing through towns and not knowing anything about them. Why do they exist here? Where do people work? How has the town changed over the years? What’s special about this place? Museums often answer those questions. Agreeing to avoid museums on this trip, though, was an easy promise since I knew that most would be closed due to Covid.

However, where would we stop? We agreed on:

• significant historical and geographical markers close to the road
• unique bridges
• any wildlife except Canada geese
• waterfalls
• provincial and national parks we hadn’t visited before
• Big Things (bigger-than-life-size sculptures of animals and objects)

Here, in geographical order, are our Top 12 Stops, all Covid-friendly, between Ottawa and Kenora.

1. Toburn Gold Mine, Kirkland Lake

“Pull over! Right here! Turn right!” I exclaimed as Bill zoomed into Kirkland Lake. He slammed on the brakes (again) in time to turn at the sign saying ‘Toburn Gold Mine Free Self Guided Tours’ in front of the tall reddish headframe (the top of the mine shaft). What a bonanza! The park-like area was essentially an outdoor museum and we had it all to ourselves.

An open-sided shed housed a video screen behind a window where you could learn about the geological process of gold deposition, how it’s mined, and the history of gold mining in the Kirkland Lake area. From 1913 to 1953, 600,000 ounces of gold were mined. Then, we wandered around the grounds, observing the diamond drill machines, a cage that moved men and equipment up and down the shafts, and various other pieces of mining equipment: winches, fire hose wagon, mucking machine, ore cars and a battery tramming motor.The Rock Walk was a circle of 26 boulders around the parking lot, all numbered and described. Our favourite was Rock #9: pink syenite with feldspar, quartz and gold-bearing pyrite.       

To my joy, I discovered that many other small towns we passed through (such as Chapleau, Terrace Bay, Nestor Falls) had outdoor exhibits or information panels or memorial markers that told stories or explained the economy or history about the town. All of them let me keep my promise to not go “into” a museum.

2. Arctic Watershed geographical marker, Hwy 11 north of Temiskaming

After the Champlain Astrolabe, we soon reached the point where all waters flow north to the Arctic Ocean. Behind us, waters flow to the Atlantic Ocean. The roadside sign also marked, in my mind, that our adventure was finally getting underway, that we had started into a new territory of discoveries.

3. Timmins Museum, Timmins

On Day 4, I semi-unintentionally broke my museum promise. In Timmins, we found the visitor centre. Walking in, we passed a small green house that I took to be the closed museum. “We’re visiting and we want to do something that’s safe,” I told the young masked man at the desk.

“Well, the museum is free and there’s no one in here right now, so it’s safe,” he said, gesturing behind him at the entrance to the real museum. I paused, avoided Bill’s gaze and then marched right into that museum. He didn’t say anything and followed me in, where we found excellent exhibits on mining, the two world wars and how Timmins was settled. I really appreciated how all the exhibits included the points of view of First Nations people and women, which are mostly glossed over or forgotten entirely, in my experience. A large panel described the residential schools. Other panels were open and forthright about past racism in this highly multicultural area, especially during the wars when there was an internment camp nearby. I bought a post card of the “Lady Prospector” – an untraditional vocation for women back in 1911 – to add to my journal. The museum struck me as a very honest one, that didn’t shove the difficult stuff under the mat. I respect that.

4. Potholes Provincial Park, on Hwy 101 between Chapleau and Wawa

This free day-use-only park highlights several round potholes created by melting glaciers. Imagine large boulders tumbling downstream from a melting glacier, then being caught and spun around until they drilled a perfectly round cavity in the bedrock. That’s some powerful glacial current! You’d swear the potholes were created by humans. The potholes are now part of the Kinniwabi River, which is called a “misfit” stream because it’s too small to have created its surroundings.

5. Wawa

The giant Canada Goose and Young’s General Store were the only two Wawa sights I had seen before, breezing by in quick trips off the highway. This time, we approached Wawa along Hwy 101 – the back door so to speak, and discovered so much more that we ended up staying two nights, camped on the beach on Wawa Lake. Like the Kirkland Lake gold mine, Wawa is virtually an open-air museum, with information panels about mining next to a giant drilling rig and the town’s Heritage Doors series – doorway-sized panels scattered about that profile people who visited or contributed to the town. We learned that Glenn Gould, Canada’s famous pianist and composer, regularly visited Wawa, always staying in Room 102 at The Wawa Motor Inn while he cleared his mind and found inspiration to write. Louisa MacKenzie Bethune – great-grandmother of Dr. Norman Bethune and cousin of explorer Alexander Mackenzie – was an early pioneer and is buried in a heritage cemetery just outside town.

And of course, we also visited the Goose again. Turns out this is the third Canada Goose to reign over Wawa. The first, made of plaster and mesh, fell apart soon after it was installed in 1960 to mark the extension of the Trans Canada Highway to Wawa. It’s been refurbished and is now beside Young’s General Store. The second, made of stainless steel, lasted until 2017 when it was replaced with this third one, a clone of its predecessor.

6. Hiking trail to Scenic High Falls, Wawa

You can drive to High Falls, or you can start downstream at Silver Falls and hike 3 kilometres (each way) to see this wide, beautiful waterfall on the Magpie River. The trail had some steep hills, but the woods were cool, lush and mossy, springy underfoot and sheltering pretty flowers and colourful mushrooms. Best of all, we met only one other couple on the trail.

7. Sandy Beach, Wawa

My previous attempts to swim in Lake Superior had been lightning-fast, stopped by that sharp intake of breath that signals the brain to abort the mission immediately. This time, however, the imaginatively named Sandy Beach enticed me with promises that it wasn’t as cold in this shallow protected cove. Promise delivered. It was chilly getting in, but once I began swimming, it was quite pleasant and I stayed in for about 10 minutes. Or perhaps I was just numb by then. I later learned that Lake Superior has warmed up an average of one degree per decade since the 1980s and the average surface temperature this summer has been six degrees above normal. Good for swimming but not good for climate change.

8. Group of Seven Touring Route, Wawa to Nipigon

We first encountered the artist’s stool and easel on Sandy Beach, just below Wawa on Lake Superior, part of a series along the roads from Kleinburg to Sault Ste. Marie to Nipigon highlighting places where Group of Seven artists painted. Just like Glenn Gould, they found inspiration in Wawa. The easel on Sandy Beach shared information about A.Y. Jackson, who co-owned a cottage there from 1955 until his death in 1974 and completed many paintings in the area. I love the Group of Seven so was thrilled with this discovery. After that, we sought other stool-and-easel displays along our route in Pukaskwa National Park, Terrace Bay, Rossport and Nipigon.   

9. Pukaskwa National Park, near Marathon

We didn’t know much about this national park (pronounced Puck-a-saw), but decided on a whim to stop in. The beauty and peace enthralled us, and we ended up camping there for two nights so we’d have time to hike all the easy and intermediate trails. (The long difficult Coastal Hiking Trail is 60 kilometres.) A few trails led to long sandy beaches piled with silver driftwood. Two trails looped around headlands jutting into Lake Superior, with spectacular views of rock formations and pounding waves. Bill’s favourite was Manito Miikana (pronounced Man-ih-to Mee-kan-ah) for the expansive ocean-like views plus the intimate details of moss, lichen and fungi in the woods. My favourite was the Bimose Kinoomagewnan (pronounced Bim-moh-say Kin-oh-mahg-eh-wan-un) trail, which means ‘Walk of Teachings’ in the Anishnaabe language. The trail circles a small lake, with seven stops for the seven teachings: Respect, Truth, Wisdom, Honesty, Courage, Love, and Humility. Ever since then, I’ve been contemplating how I can better follow those teachings. We loved Pukaskwa.

10. Nipigon River Bridge, Nipigon

As you enter Nipigon, you cross an eye-catching silver suspension bridge – the most handsome bridge we encountered through northern Ontario. Shortly after the bridge is an observation tower you can climb to get a view of the bridge. Much easier to take photos from there than as you’re crossing. Unfortunately, there’s not much information given about the bridge, but Wikipedia tells me it was built in stages and finally completed in 2018. 

11. Northern Ontario Sportfishing Centre, Sioux Narrows

It was a ‘centre,’ not a museum! That’s my excuse for going inside. And again, we were the only ones there. I’m not a big fishing fan (although I love to eat it), but this centre shed light on why the sport is so popular in northern Ontario. Bill waxed nostalgic when he saw the display of old outboard motors – he’d had a Johnson Seahorse 9.9 when he was a kid. The best feature was a video series about Lake of the Woods hosted by Sean Kavanagh, who explained in an engaging way the history, geography, stories and current activities around the lake with 14,000 islands. For example, many islands still have old survey markers placed back in 1797 by explorer and cartographer David Thompson.

12. Husky the Muskie, Kenora

I’ve always been intrigued by ‘Big Things’ – those larger-than-life sculptures that towns erect to represent themselves and lure in visitors. Northern Ontario offers many – possibly because there’s not much else to see other than trees, rocks and water – along its highways. Husky the Muskie presides over Lake of the Woods in a lovely flower-bedecked Kenora park. He’s so popular, there’s a pedestrian underpass so people don’t get schmucked crossing the highway to visit. Husky was my favourite muskellunge, but we also saw a giant cow, bison, eagle, lake trout, curling stone, Canada goose, bear and other assorted fish.

Our list served as a good guideline for places to stop through northern Ontario. We were a tad short on the wildlife viewings – a coyote was the highlight amongst many monarch butterflies, red squirrels, chipmunks and a great blue heron. A chipmunk actually bit me on the toe in Pukaskwa National Park!

We would have added more to our list, but it got cut short when Bill suddenly slammed on the brakes at The Chip Pit in Cobden.

“Poutine,” he said. “We’ll always stop for poutine.”

“But we’ve seen this before, just like the Astrolabe,” I said.

“I know, but I’ve seen a lot of museums more than once.”

Touché.