On Thursday, September 12, Environment Canada promised sunshine and warmth. At 7:00 a.m. in Thunder Bay, it was dark and foggy. The fog persisted for 200 kilometres, all the way to Atikokan.  

My sister Sue and I picked up our coffee mochas at Timmys. Any trip longer than 5 klicks demands a coffee mocha. We proceeded west on Hwy. 102, at crawl speed, switching to Hwy. 17, and then Hwy. 11, all in the dark. I pulled on to the shoulder, letting a convoy pass me, and the traffic faded into the murk.

The purpose of my trip? To visit the birthplace of our two children, to check out the origin of Canadian National Railways in Ontario, and to find a lost mine.

What is this Atikokan? For the first hundred years the river was called Atik-Okan, meaning “bones of the caribou”. You know, Canadian place names have interesting histories. Regina was located in “pile of bones”, Saskatchewan, but the bones belonged to the buffalo. And Newfoundland was located in “place where the last living Beothuk died, and his bones have never been found”. Interesting, eh?

At the turnoff to Sapawe, I made my first attempt to find the lost mine. There was a hotel cum diner on the corner. Nobody was home. A lady emerged from the shadows with a mop. Nope. She had never heard of any lost mine.

We arrived at the Museum of Atikokan at 10:00 a.m., the time of opening. Nobody was home. Apparently on Hwy. 11 we had crossed an invisible boundary and left the Eastern Standard Time zone. It was now 9:00 a.m. Central Standard Time.

I shoulda remembered that. I left Atikokan in June 1961 with wife and two children, and now sixty-three years later, it was the same time, CST. I shoulda remembered that.

Anyway, we put in motion the first of my objectives. In August 1959 I started my first teaching job, at Hemlock Avenue Public School. Relying on my memory, which is flawless until it lapses, we traversed several streets and subdivisions. Let me tell you about Atikokan streets.

If there is ever a off-road rally organized for this region, I suggest holding it on Atikokan streets. If you find it fun to be jerked around and flung sideways and upwards and suffer chipped teeth and bitten lips, race down Atikokan streets. Otherwise, crawl around. We did.

We didn’t travel their main street, O’Brien. Nobody did. It was being improved (i.e., re-engineered). We caught glimpses of the Atikokan River when we peeped down the banks. They were very deep and steep banks. It is a placid creek, but has been known to get frothy and flood basements. The iron mine for which I was searching was located on one of its banks some two dozen kilometres east. There are no historical reports of its shafts ever flooding. Perhaps because it has no shafts. Just tunnels.

Okay, you may think I am referring to Atikokan’s famous iron mine, Steep Rock Iron Mines. I am not. I peered into its shaft once, as wide and deep as a lake, because it was. A lake. Drained dry. Steep Rock mine started operations in the 1940s. Atikokan Iron Mine started in the 1900 decade.

We didn’t find the hospital where Rob, our first born in September ’59, saw the light of day. And our second born, Laura, a year later. Likely demolished. We didn’t find the corner grocery where I ran up a bill that took me eighteen months after I left to pay off. Now a residence, I think. We didn’t find the compact high school which inspired me to seek higher education, because those teachers went home at 4:00 o’clock, whereas I was still preparing lessons for next day at 10:00 p.m. That location is now a sprawling K-12 edifice.

But we did, eventually, find Hemlock Avenue, much shorter than I remembered. And the school? Nobody was home. Someone built an open-air rink in that location and left the boards up.

Sue marveled at the rocky mountain that snaked through the community. That had been my Saturday pleasure garden, where I hunted wildflowers and haunted wildlife.

At 10:00 CST, we entered the museum to be greeting by Patti, the curator, as per pre-arrangement. In the visitors’ registration book, were Atikokan names from the day before. I was amazed. It has been my experience that locals rarely, if ever, visit their own rural museums.

And the museum? I was amazed. It was comparable to a big-city museum. Tens of thousands of hours had been devoted to creating the exhibits.

The museum had nothing in its vertical files (file folders) about the Atikokan Iron Mine, but a label in a museum exhibit declared it had been found in 1890. I promised to forward to Patti the document that proved it had been found in 1870. This evidence convinced the Ontario Geological Survey to amend its record.

They had lotsa stuff about Atikokan’s railway. The province granted a charter to the Ontario and Rainy River Railway in 1886. In 1899 the Canadian Northern Railway started building it, and made Atikokan a divisional point. Atikokan’s population in 1899? Zero, counting the caribou. In 1901 the tracks reached Port Arthur, and officials drove the last spike on January 1, 1902. Where? At Atikokan. Today the Canadian Northern is known as Canadian National Railways.

[Continued in Part 2]