Lake Nipissing and the French River are attractive grounds for the camper and the canoeist; but they are not suited to the "tenderfoot." It is amazing that a region which can be reached with ease is yet so absolutely a place where the lover of Nature in her wild solitudes can absolutely secure a vacation from relentless Time! In the Lake Nipissing land he may elude the postman and the telephone. Doubtless by 1920, some invading airship will drop a voluminous mail at his feet when he is out in his canoe; but at the present time the sojourner here is immune from cables, telegrams, Marconigrams, long-distance telephones, special deliveries, messenger boys, and all this incubus of what we call civilisation. If radiograms fall upon him they must needs come from the solar system alone. Emerson, even in the prehistoric period of the nineteenth century, declared solitude a thing impossible to find.
"When I would spend a lonely day
Sun and moon are in my way,"
he complains. The lingerer camping out on the French River has no green-shaded electric reading-lamp at his elbow; no electric bell summons his servitor. He "catches" his breakfast in the deep waters of the lake; he concocts his matutinal coffee over a camp-fire. No ingenious victrola enchants his evening with the lyric melody of Melba or Caruso; but instead, the strange cry of the loon echoes startlingly through the silences. And so it falls out that the hardy devotees of the chase and the camp hail this region as their El Dorado.
Unlike the Nipissing, Timagami, as before noted, may be considered to be the earthly paradise of those to whom the necessities of life consist in the modern luxuries; those who would quite sympathise with John Lothrop Motley; who remarked that if he had the luxuries of life he could get on very well without the necessities.
Nibigami, "country of lakes," is a new outing ground in Canada now made accessible by the Canadian Government Railways; and all this hitherto unknown wilderness is enlisting the devotion of thousands of hunters, of fishermen, and hardly less of the artist and student.
Three hours east of Winnipeg is Minaki, the "Beautiful Country" of the Indians, at which station passengers may disembark to step into a steam launch for a sail of twenty minutes to Minaki Inn. This is a large and charmingly appointed hotel, accommodating three hundred and fifty guests, with its annex, Minaki Lodge, affording rooms for seventy-five in addition, located in a natural park of fourteen acres, every room having its own outlook over lakes or woodlands. With its spacious piazzas, its artistic furnishing, its admirable management, it is little wonder that the Minaki Inn has leapt into popular favour, not only for season guests, but also for travellers en route for the Canadian Rockies, for Jasper and Mount Robson Parks, or Prince Rupert, and for all those who find the Minaki a restful place at which to break the journey. The hotel is woodland embowered and lake mirrored. It is supremely comfortable.
Around the lakes on which the Inn is placed is a large and constantly increasing number of cottages, very artistic in architectural detail, built by wealthy people of Winnipeg and elsewhere for their summer homes. They are by no means primitive in construction; the latest devices in heating, lighting, and household conveniences as well as luxurious furnishings are in evidence; and at night from the piazzas and balconies of the hotel the circle of these friendly illuminations around the lakes is fascinating to the gazer.
View in Jasper Park