Northern Ontario

May 30

We’ve spent the last several days driving through Northern Ontario.  It isn’t ‘north-north’ in latitude.  We’re further north at home in Leduc!  But geographically speaking it’s north.  It’s the Canadian Shield which means it’s a lot of stone, bush and water; rocks and trees, a never-ending-ever-changing forest.  It’s beautiful and remote.  

Cue the Arrogant Worms sound track:

'Cause we've got
Rocks and trees
And trees and rocks
And rocks and trees
And trees and rocks
And rocks and trees
And trees and rocks
And rocks and trees
And trees and rocks
And water

We drove up to Sioux Lookout and just beyond that, at Pickle Lake, the pavement ends.  We drove from Longlac to Hearst, a stretch of about 150 km without any services or communities along the highway.  We drove through logging towns, mining towns, past hunting and fishing camps, yet ended up at a Walmart in Kapusaksing for the night.

It’s the end of May and it’s been cool the whole way.  There have been frost warnings most nights.  We’ve been wimpy and turned on the furnace.  The deciduous trees are just beginning to leaf out, although it varied from region to region.  In some places it's beautiful variations of green.  Imagine the variations of red in the fall.

We’ve now entered the upper end of the Ottawa Valley, the Atlantic watershed.  New Liskeard is a pretty little town along Lake Temiskaming and surprisingly, it’s a farm town.  In the midst of the Canadian Shield is a belt of good farmland.  It was a lovely place for a picnic stop.

Both the Mattawa and Ottawa rivers have been flooding this year. We drove down to one campground only to be turned back because it was still too wet.  That was ok as there were way too many black flies and mosquitoes anyway.  Instead, we camped in the Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park, a beautiful park along the Mattawa River but on higher ground!