Camping in the Arctic Watershed

The first town of any size we came to is 225 kilometers north of Sault Ste. Marie and is called Wawa. It’s an Indian name which means “great goose.” Jim said, “It might as well mean ‘great barren land.’” There is little between the small towns. We stopped at a small grocery store next to the gas station/bait shop/firewood store/transmission shop. At Wawa we turned to the east and drove for hours on a road where we saw little besides more trees than you can shake a stick at. Then out in the middle of nowhere, there was a big sign. Not a billboard like you see along the expressway, but a big sign. It said that we were crossing into the Arctic Watershed. On one side, water drains south to the Atlantic Ocean. On the other, water drains north to the Arctic Ocean. When you get into the Arctic Watershed, you start wondering how many gas stations you’ll see. It turned out to be two between Wawa and Timmins, Ontario.

Timmins is significantly bigger than Wawa and is an old French name for “home of Shania Twain.” The only thing that has brought more money to Timmins than Shania is the gold mine. From there a turn to the north got us to Cochrane which is not truly the end of the road because you can take a road out of town due west into the vast wilderness of western Ontario. You can take a road out of town southeast and head straight for the culture of Toronto. But if you want to continue north, it’s the end of the road. To get from Cochrane to Moosonee, you have to take the train.

At a restaurant, our waitress Joanne told us that Cochrane is the only place in the world where you can swim with polar bears. She has a season pass to do it. Joe said, “Only at a place with a latitude of 49 degrees north would someone come up with the idea of attracting tourists by allowing them to swim with polar bears.” The air must be thinner up there. You don’t actually swim with the bears, but are in a pool with a glass partition with polar bears on the other side. None of our group dared swim with the bears, but we did have our picture taken in front of a ceramic polar bear about the size of a Mack truck.

Cochrane is also the hometown of Tim Horton. There is a museum in his honor at the train station. The coffee shop at the train station was not a Tim Horton’s however. Corporate leaders must insist on having their shops at places that get more traffic.

The train was called Little Bear. It makes the trip up to Moosonee one day, and comes back the next three times a week. Little Bear rests on Sundays. The train will stop anywhere along the tracks if it is flagged down by backpackers, fishermen, or hardy people who live off the land. The scenery does not include vistas. The land is mostly flat due to glaciers acting like bull dozers. But when the train crosses a river, you can understand why the Indians and early European explorers used the rivers. The views are beautiful and the rivers are wide. And after a long train ride, I thought once again about Joanne. “Why would you want to go to Moosonee?” There wasn’t much there but I tried to find the little things.

At the Moosonee station, we got our backpacks and walked the six blocks through town to the water taxi station. We passed a grocery store/bank/bait shop/transmission shop and Ontario’s famous Beer Store. The land was flat. The trees seemed stunted. I wondered if there was a high school. There was a college distance learning center. The satellite dish pointed south. The buildings had few windows which presumably is to minimize drafts in the winter. Jim said the sky looked low and I told him it was because we were so far north. I know that it makes no sense, but Jim is a band director and knows little about earth science. He could tell me that a bassoon is made of the femur bone of a primate found only on the banks of the Congo River and I wouldn’t know any better.

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