In 1907, the Department of Public Works prepared twenty-three sectional plans of the proposed Georgian Bay Ship Canal to accompany their estimate of costs. Plan No. 16, shown here, provided details of the section between Lake Talon and North Bay. The plan called for a lock and several dams between Lake Nipissing and Trout Lake, creating a considerable amount of flooding on the shore of Lake Nipissing. This waterway would have joined Lake Nipissing and Trout Lake following the approximate course of Parks Creek through Jennings, Twin, and Déspensiers Lakes.
Courtesy of the University of Connecticut Libraries
In the 1870s, the first surveys for a railroad through the Nipissing area were conducted and changes to the first proposed route were made.[12] The Canada Central Extension from Renfrew reached Mattawa in 1881, the same year that the Canada Central was amalgamated with the newly organized Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). The CPR chose a location later renamed Bonfield as the eastern terminus of its transcontinental line. The line crossed the Nipissing Passageway at the eastern end of Lake Nipissing and continued along its north shore to what is now Sudbury, then to Algoma Mills at the mouth of the Spanish River on Lake Huron, a harbour that allowed them to connect to transportation available on the Great Lakes.[13] It reached the Northeast Bay of Lake Nipissing, now North Bay, in 1882. The Nipissing area had entered the railway era, studied more extensively in the chapters to follow.
Chapter 2
Railways and Sportsmen
The Rise of the Sportsman
The mid- to late-nineteenth century saw a growing interest in nature and outdoor recreation from the middle and upper class population of the United States and Canada. Men in particular were drawn to sports such as fishing, hunting, and canoeing, which allowed them to reconnect with their masculinity. They joined together in clubs and associations and they read emerging sports magazines such as American Sportsman, Canadian Alpine Journal, Canadian Sportsman, Canadian Sportsman and Naturalist, Field and Stream, Forest and Stream, Outdoor Life, Outdoor Canada, Outing, and Rod and Gun in Canada, which catered specifically to their interests.[1] Filled with stories about hunting and fishing adventures in exciting wilderness areas, these magazines were an invitation to travel as well as entertainment. They featured advertisements for resorts and railways, and for sporting gear, such as canoes, tents, guns, fishing gear, and even Kodak cameras. Articles about big game hunting and sports fishing subtly incorporated advice on how to succeed at these sports. Photographs, graphics, and even poetry inspired the sportsman and supported the notion that hunting and fishing were “gentlemen’s” sports.
The guide was a crucial component of the sportsman’s paradise. It was his skills that assured the success of a fishing trip or hunt. This image of a guide calling moose is a good example of Reuben Sallow’s photography in northern Ontario. This is both a scenic image that was used as a postcard and a documentary one that informs us of the dress of the native guides and the type of canoes they used.
“Calling moose, French River,” photograph by Reuben Sallows, Image 0002-rrs-ogoh-ph, the Reuben R. Sallows Gallery.
The sportsman’s code dictated an interest in game fish that would put up a fight and that had a fair chance of getting away. The more skill that was required to catch such fish — the use of fly-casting, for example — the better. A crafty fish was much more appealing than one that was caught easily. The pike became a “fresh water wolf” — a worthy opponent. Large muskellunge were hard to find because they had become wary after years of experience. The French River was an excellent place to fish because it was here that “some of the most active and spirited members of this family of Essox” could be found:
They are full of the real old finny fighting spirit and there is a reason for this, of course. Through living a life, constantly facing the on-rush of water they have become possessed of a great vim and force: they have a kick to the tail that would put a man’s eye out; their fins it may safely be said are two times as strong as the fins of a lake musky.[2]
What better way to make a reader decide on the French for his next fishing trip?
The sportsman saw himself as both a lover of nature and a conservationist. The wilderness and the fish and wild game had to be protected, not from himself — as his sportsman’s code of conduct excluded him from the problem — but from excessive commercial or subsistence harvesting of fish and game.[3] “Elite sportsmen took aim at subsistence and market hunters, labeling them ‘game butchers,’ ‘fish pirates,’ and ‘pot hunters’ in contrast to the ‘gentleman’ who practiced a British-style sportsmanship.”[4] To that end, sportsmen fought for legislation that would protect fish and game. In Ontario, their campaign led to changes in the game laws of the late nineteenth century. Large game, always the most favoured by hunters, was beginning to disappear. “An indiscriminate slaughter of this noble animal [moose] has long threatened the total extinction of the race, and it is probable that the time is not far distant when the moose, like the buffalo, will be seen no more in Canada,” a government report noted.[5] More stringent game laws were instituted and wardens and deputy wardens appointed to enforce them. In 1893, the Game Protection Act (56 Vict. c. 49, O.) closed the season for moose until 1895, and in 1895 it was decided to extend the closed season to October 25, 1900 (Statute of Ontario 1895, c.56, s. I.). As their numbers increased, the ban was replaced by limits instead. Limits were also imposed on the number of deer that could be killed. The unrestricted use of dogs and the killing of deer in the water were of particular concern. The act of 1893 limited the number of deer to two, but dogs were still allowed. In 1896, it became prohibited to kill deer in the water or soon after they left the water (S.O. 1896, c. 68, s. I). A license was also required to transport deer out of the area. Despite these changes, some sportsmen felt that the regulations and the level of enforcement were not meeting their needs. Their chief complaints were directed at the lumbermen and the “Indians,” who, in their view, were killing too many animals.[6]
Of all the game fish sports fishermen were interested in, the prize was surely the muskellunge, shown here in a painting by F.V. Williams, used on the cover of Rod and Gun. Known for its size, strength, and fighting spirit, it was a worthy opponent, and there were many stories of those that got away. Here, Williams refers to it as a “fresh water wolf,” a term that by enhancing the reputation of the fish, also added to the prestige of the fishermen who caught it.
Courtesy of the University of Toronto Library. Used with permission of the Canadian Forestry Association.
The male-only hunting or fishing holiday was the norm but some women enjoyed outdoor life and participated in these activities as well. There was a considerable presence of women in early sporting magazines such as Forest and Stream. Smalley argues that the inclusion of women in hunting as a recreational sport was important to the campaign to turn hunting into a recreational activity and distinguish hunting by sportsmen from hunting by pot hunters and other non-sportsmen. “Outdoor magazines stressed the difference between [a] modern, reformed picture of hunting as a respectable avocation and an earlier view of hunting as a lower-class occupation.”[7] This in turn made it easier to argue for game preservation and the limiting of hunting to recreational hunters. Once their goals were achieved in the 1920s, she argues, women disappeared from the pages of magazines devoted to hunting. Although the Rod and Gun cover for December 1913 showed a woman hunting and ads for rifles sometimes showed men and women hunting together, women more often appeared in the pages of Rod and Gun in Canada with fish or their Kodak camera, or in a canoe, than with game.
Canoeists were growing in number in the late nineteenth century[8] and adult recreational canoeing in Canada reached its pre-1960 peak in the 1920s.[9]