Thunder Bay

Thunder Bay lived up to its name today. First, the sun came roaring up over the Sleeping Giant, a peninsula in Lake Superior which, from a distance, resembles its namesake. Then the McGillivray Pipe Band welcomed the Viking Polaris into port with “Scotland the Brave.” My breakfast of eggs covered with smoked salmon and bechamel sauce fortified me for my trip back to the year 1815.

I had never heard of Thunder Bay until we took this trip. Actually until 1970 there was not a Thunder Bay. There were two towns, close enough to be rivals, and frankly, they did not like each other very much. Nevertheless, the government ordered the two towns to merge. Old timers still fuss about that order, and many older residents still say that they are from Port Arthur or from Fort William. But the newly merged town named itself Thunder Bay, and it has grown into one of the most successful and livable cities in North America. Geographically it is the largest city in Canada, and with about 130,000 citizens, it is roomy, spacious and uncrowded. Salaries are not as quite as high as in Toronto or Vancouver, but the cost of living is much lower here. Therefore, the buying power of an individual family is higher than that in any of Canada’s largest cities. The city has a university, a new law school, and an increasingly diverse economy. A park near our dock hosted an annual party which the community of immigrants from India gives to the city each year. Providers offer free music, free food and free drinks to residents of their new host country. What better way to win acceptance from their new neighbors? Thunder Bay looks toward an exciting future.

But today we traveled in time back to Fort William and the year 1815 when the Northwest Trading Company had a trading post here. Trappers and indigenous tribes brought beaver pelts from the north and west in canoes, and shippers brought manufactured goods from England. They met at Fort William the second week in July every year for the rendezvous, an annual frenzy of buying, selling, meeting old friends and partying. The Ontario provincial government has made an exact reproduction of the fort, and employs re-enactors to explain the arduous and dangerous process of portaging the rivers to bring animal skins to the annual summer rendezvous at Fort William. All of this effort was aimed at satisfying the craze for top hats to cover the heads of European gentlemen in the early 19th century. Each spring as soon as the rivers thawed, hundreds of canoes, each loaded with six men, each man carrying two ninety-pound bundles of beaver pelts traveled over 500 miles in a canoe to get here. That’s two tons of weight in a small canoe on turbulent rivers for eight to ten weeks. When they had to portage around waterfalls or rapids each man carried his two ninety-pound bundles a quarter of a mile before returning to hoist two more bundles. Then he would carry them over the same quarter-mile track, then repeat the process numberless times until they reached calm water. Eventually they reached Fort William during the second week in July. Today our interpreter, portraying owner William McGillivary, described the arduous labor and the extreme danger of the fur trapping trade in such a way that I wondered how these traders could even survive the perilous enterprise in mere birch bark canoes. Then it occurred to me that probably a significant portion did not survive. Without records we can only guess. It was punishing, often lethal, work.

After our visit to Fort William, we were bused over to Kakabeka Falls, one of the cataracts the voyageurs had to skirt. It is almost as high as Niagara, though not as wide. Even so, the falls have a raw and powerful beauty that is matched in few other places on earth. There are no wax museums here, no fancy restaurants, no casinos, nor glitzy hotels. The falls are a lot like Thunder Bay itself. No gloss. No glamor. But Thunder Bay doesn’t need these things. In some ways the town is rough and maybe a bit rustic. Most of the folks here rather like it that way. Real. Unpretentious. Yet the fact remains that if you can stand the minus 30 degree winters, Thunder Bay is a great place to live.En savoir plus