The decadence of trade had been so great, and the prospects of the Niagara River presenting so little hope that Captain Thomas Dick had turned his thoughts and energies into the direction of the North Shore of Lake Huron, where mining and lumbering were beginning, and to Lake Superior, where the construction of the Dawson Road, as a connection through Canadian territory, to Fort Garry was commenced. He had several years previously transferred the second City of Toronto to these Upper Lake waters, and after being reboilered and rebuilt, her name had been changed to Algoma, commanded at first by his half brother, Capt. Jas. Dick, and in 1863 he had obtained the contract for carrying the mails for the Manitoulin Island and Lake Huron Shore to Sault Ste. Marie.
If ever there was a steamer which deserved the name of "Pathfinder," it was this steamer "Algoma." It was said that all the officers, pilots and captains of later days had been trained on her, and that she had found out for them every shoal along her route by actual contact. Being a staunchily built wooden boat with double "walking beam" engines, working independently, one on each wheel, she always got herself off with little trouble or damage. One trip is personally remembered. Coming out from Bruce Mines the Algoma went over a boulder on a shoal in such way as to open up a plank in the bottom, just in front of the boilers. Looking down the forward hatch the water could be watched as it boiled up into the fire-hold, but as long as the wheels were kept turning the pumps could keep the in-rush from gaining, so the steamer after backing off was continued on her journey.
When calling at docks the engines were never stopped, one going ahead the other reversed, until after Sault Ste. Marie had been reached and the balance of the cargo unloaded, when the steamer, with the men in the fire-hold working up to their ankles in water, set off on her run of 400 miles to Detroit, where was then the only dry dock into which she could be put.
After a long and successful career the brave boat died a quiet death alongside a dock, worn out as a lumber barge.
This transference of Captain Dick's interests to the Upper Lakes was, strangely enough, the precursor to the events which led to the creation of another era in navigation on the Niagara River. This "North Shore" route, although for long centuries occupied by the outposts of the Hudson Bay and North West fur companies, was so far as immigration and mercantile interests were concerned, an undeveloped territory. Along its shores was the traditional canoe and batteaux route from French River to Fort William on the Kaministiqua River for trade with the great prairies by the interlacing waterways to Lake Manitoba and the Red River. At intervals, such as at Spanish River, Missassaga, Garden River, Michipicoten and Nepigon River, were the outlets for the canoe and portage routes, north to the Hudson Bay and great interior fur preserves. This ancient rival to the Niagara River route had remained little varied from the era of canoe and sail. The secrets of its natural products, other than fur, being as well kept as were those of the fertility of the soil of the "great Lone Land," under the perennial control of the same adventurers of Charles II.
The creation of the "Dominion of Canada" and of the "Province of Ontario" under Confederation in 1867 and its establishment as the "District of Algoma" brought it political representation in the Provincial Legislature and a development of its unoccupied possibilities.
The size of the constituency was phenomenal. Its first representative in the Legislature of Ontario used quizzically to describe it: "Where is my constituency? Sir, Algoma, is the greatest constituency on earth, and larger than many an Empire in Europe. On the east it is bounded by the French River, on the south by all the waters of Lakes Huron and Lake Superior, on the west by Manitoba, with an undecided boundary, and on the north by the North Pole, and the Lord knows where."
Its permanent voters were few and sparsely spread along a line of nigh 500 miles. By the Act of Confederation, Algoma was given a special qualification for its voters being for every male British subject of 21 or over, being a householder. Thus it has sometimes been averred that during hotly contested elections the migratory Indians for a while ceased to wander, that "shack towns" suddenly arose in the neighborhood of the saw mills, composed of small "slab" sided dwellings in which dusky voters lived until election day was over. It may be from these early seedlings that the several constituencies which have since been carved out from their great progenitor, have not been unremarkable for eccentricities in methods of ballot and in varieties of voters.
Further diversion of vessel interests from the Niagara Route to the Upper Lakes, and the circumstances which, within personal knowledge, accompanied it, are a part of the history, and a prelude to the return to the river.