Loading ...– Brings back many memories of my youth , and trips back to Kirkland Lake to visit an uncle and aunt who were like second parents to me . There were always a couple of Pullman sleepers on the train and it was a big adventure to pull out of Toronto around dusk and be rocked to sleep in a berth as it trundled Northward , to reach North Bay as dawn was breaking . Then pass through Cobalt , and New Liskeard to leave the train at Swastika where ‘Big John’** and ‘Tina would be waiting , as the Ontario Northland , as it was known then , continued Northward to Timmins and beyond . Then on the cab ride from Swastika and Chaput Hughes to KL passing those huge granite and quartz rocks , worn to smooth roundness by glaciers during ice ages , millennia ago . My home town after we left KL in the early 1940’s was built on the delta of a river draining Lake Huron – all sand and clay with no big rocks so it was like going home to go back to where you could see the exposed Canadian Shield , Spruce , and wild blueberry bushes .
** My uncle ‘Big John’ ( not the one from the song ) was a career underground hard rock miner at Lakeshore Mines , whose home was literally built on a granite outcropping . which rose like a dome down in a corner of their basement . On rainy days I would go down to the basement and climb that rock outcropping , sometimes feeling the ‘bump’ when there would be blasting or a dangerous rock burst far below .
Maya – Thanks for the Northlander photo
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