Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

Sudbury, the same type of town, growing at a distracting pace because of its railway connection and its smelting plants, had the same sort of ceremony. From here we passed through a land of almost sinister bleakness. There were tracts livid and stark, entirely without vegetation, and with the livid white and naked surface cut into wild channels and gullies by rains that must have been as pitiless as the land. It was as though we had steamed out of a human land into the drear valleys of the moon, and one expected to catch glimpses of creatures as terrifying as any Mr. Wells has imagined. So cadaverous a realm could breed little else.

It was the country of nickel and copper. We saw occasionally the buildings and workings (scarce less grim than the land) through the agency of which came the grey slime that had rendered the country so bleak. They are particularly rich mines, and rank high among the nickel workings in the world. They were also, let it be said, of immense value to the Allies during the war.

Pushing south, the line soon redeems itself in the beauty of the lakes. It bends to skirt the shore of Lake Huron, a great blue sea, and yet but a link in the chain of great lakes that lead from Superior through it to Erie and Ontario lakes, and on to the St. Lawrence.

We arrived on a beautiful evening at Algoma, a spot as delightful as a Cornish village, on the beach of that inlet of Lake Huron called Georgian Bay. We walked in the astonishing quiet of the evening through the tiny place, and along the deep, sandy road that has not yet been won from the primitive forests, to where but a tiny fillet of beach stood between the spruce woods and the vast silence of the water. From that serene and quiet spot we looked through the still evening to the far and beautiful Islands.

In the wonderful clear air, and with all the soft colours of the sunset glowing in the still water, the beauty of the place was almost too poignant. We might have been the discoverers of an uninhabited bay in the Islands of the Blessed. I have never known any place so remote, so still and so beautiful. But it was far from being uninhabited. There were rustic picnic tables under the spruce trees, and there was a diving-board standing over the clear water. The inhabitants of Algoma knew the worth of this place, and we felt them to be among the luckiest people on the earth.

The islands we saw far away in the soft beauty of the sunset, and between which the enigmatic light of a lake steamer was moving, are said to be Hiawatha's Islands. In any case, it was here that the pageant of Hiawatha was held some years back, and across the still lake in that pageant, Hiawatha in his canoe went out to be lost in the glories of the sunset.

II

On the morning of Tuesday, September 4th, the train skirted Georgian Bay, passing many small villages given over to lumber and fishing, and all having, with their tiny jetties, motor launches and sailing boats, something of the perfection of scenes viewed in a clear mirror. By mid-morning the train reached Sault Ste. Marie.

"Soo" is a vivid place. It is a young city on the rise. A handful of years ago it was a French mission, beginning to turn its eyes languidly towards lumber. It is on the neck that joins the waters of Superior and Huron, but the only through traffic was that of the voyageurs, who made the portage round the stiff St. Mary's Rapids, that, with a drop of eighteen feet in their length, forbade any vessel but that of the canoe of the adventurer to pass their troubled waters.

Then America and Canada began to build canals and locks to link the great lakes, in spite of the Rapids, and "Soo" woke. It has been awake and living since that moment. It has been playing lock against lock with the Michigan men across the river, each planning cunningly to establish a system that will carry the long lake vessels not only in locks befitting their size, but in locks that can be handled more swiftly than those of the rival.