Beyond Thunder Bay

Access to this beautiful park was closed when I travelled east, unsure when I'd be back that way.  As I picked my way through the heavy construction of the Ontario highway crews twinning the blacktop east of Thunder Bay, the Green Sign God pointed me toward a memorial.  My eyes glanced upward, across the oncoming traffic limping through the roadworks.  I saw something.  A flash of something, high above the granite cliffs that had been blasted out of the sloping Superior coast to make the road bed.  It was just a glimpse.  I was not even sure what I had seen, but it put a lump in my throat and choked me up.  I got goose bumps.  Then I was past.

Weeks later, indeed, I found myself heading west, across the same stretch of highway, now smooth and freshly lined.  The workers had done themselves proud.  The further behind I put Nipigon, and the nearer I came to Thunder Bay, the more frequent the cliffs and the sense of the big peninsula creating  The Lakehead Harbour, and the more determined I became that I would visit this park.  It had left a sense in me.  Nobody had recommended this place.  I had past easily thousands of signs along my 15,000 kilometer journey enticing me in to visit, taste, view, stop, buy, and sleep.  I had learned to ignore the promotional media along the road.  But this was different.  

The first time I had driven through a wave of something.  I remembered.  And I wanted to get closer, and see it with my own eyes.  Truly, I was drawn.

So, I took the exit.  The new entrance way gracefully  circled me around the park, and up a gentle slope to a most beautifully groomed park and interpretive centre.  People had dogs, threw frisbees, looked at the sea.  Mostly, they just spoke quietly and stopped for a few minutes, (not many stayed long) to bask in the ominous presence created there.

People were not there to pay tribute.  This was a place where we were given grace.

click on the images to take a closer look

Ford Country

This is just an ordinary day in June. In any other part of Manitoba, this circumstance would result in news. Road closures would be posted. Radio stations would be warning drivers to take caution.

The Swan River Valley is 60 kilometers across and has no fewer than a dozen rivers flowing through it, ultimately north-eastward into Hudson Bay. The depression era and post WWII "good roads" program came to the valley, but there was not enough money for bridges. Solution? Ford Crossings. In The Valley there are more than 80 Ford Crossings. In the winter, these appear as little dips and dales on snow-covered roads. In the spring, the roads are soft and the crossings are impassable. Travellers simply have to go around, circumventing, sometimes making three or four attempts, until they find a bridge and can continue on their way.
But it is the summer surprises that make a day's outing in The Valley a particular adventure. Sometimes when you approach a ford, you will see a few inches of water crossing the road, and will risk the crossing. Other times, you will see white-water torrents and will have to get out and evaluate the situation. Everyone in The Valley has stories about attempted or aborted crossings, lost time, or unplanned picnics by a rushing river.

The rivers of the Swan River Valley come from what are affectionately known by locals as the "North Mountain" or the "South Mountain, the Porcupine or the Duck Mountain, to folks from further afield. All of the rivers run. Some seem quite modestly small in the heat of a dry August, but a sudden torrent can put the rivers to work, as spillways for the excess that flows from the beaver ponds and lakes that populate the lush, dense mixed wood forests of the north and south mountains.

So, next time you travel through west-central Manitoba, do not be afraid to venture off Highway 10. There is local lore, that indeed, every ford crossing has a cache, or a treasure, in fact, a clue. The story cannot be completed until you witness the cache and gather every clue. The keepers know that the caches remain intact and the story that unfolds as you build your intimacy with Ford Country is of an amazing Kingdom. The Swan River Valley.