Visitors to Sault Ste. Marie revel in the superlative: the world’s largest freshwater lake, the world’s biggest game preserve. And then there’s the scenic Agawa Canyon, which inspired the Group of Seven artists, as the site of one of the globe’s most thrilling rail tours.
BY PAUL KING and BARBARA FULTON
Sault Ste. Marie deserves far more attention than its reputation as a steel town. And the scenic Agawa Canyon is just one of many great reasons to visit.
The Soo, as the nation’s former steel capital is dubbed, may be a small city of 80,000 souls, but everything around it is massive. It's abutted by the world's largest freshwater lake, the world's busiest lock system and the world's biggest game preserve. It's also the hometown of Roberta Bondar, the first Canadian woman to fly into space.
Skirting the north shore of the St. Mary's River, today's tidy, tree-lined city was once an Algonquin village whose first European visitor was the famed French explorer Étienne Brûlé in 1610. When the North West Company founded a fur-trading post here in 1783, it also dug a canal so that its huge canoes could bypass the roiling rapids between the river and mighty Lake Superior.
That vast expanse, fed by 200 rivers, isn't just the world's largest freshwater lake (82,100 square kilometres). It's also the highest (180 metres above sea level) and deepest (plunging to 406 metres). Scientists say its total volume could cover North America with 30 centimetres of water.
To tap Superior's resources, the canal at Sault Ste. Marie was replaced in 1895 by the world's first electrically operated lock, which lifted ships 11 metres and formed the last of the 16 "water steps" in the 3,226-kilometre Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway System that links Superior with the Atlantic.
The addition of four huge locks on the Michigan side of the St. Mary's River in the 1900s made the Sault Ste. Marie canal system the world's busiest. Giant steel ships carrying more than 100 million tonnes of grain, lumber and coal pass through each year. In fact, the "Soo Canals" convey more tonnage in a day than both Panama and Suez do in a week.
Even the sky above the locks is filled with steel. Besides the arcing three-kilometre International Bridge (used by more than two million passenger vehicles a year), three massive railroad bridges also connect Ontario and Michigan. Below them on the Canadian bank, the lights of the sprawling Algoma Steel plant blaze through the night.
Steel and the Soo have been synonymous since U.S. industrialist Francis Clergue hit town in 1892 ― and iron ore was discovered in Wawa to the north. Foreseeing a fortune, Clergue lined up wealthy investors to develop 12 major industries, including a steel mill, a paper mill, two power and light utilities, two railways, a fleet of steamships and a streetcar system.
By the early 1900s, Clergue had built an industrial empire and his vision had virtually created the city. Yet it's his Algoma Central Railway that today lures more than 100,000 riders annually.
Construction began in 1899 to bring ore down from Wawa, with 2,000 men battling black flies and bush fires to lay track across plunging river ravines. The rails had stretched to Mile 56 when Clergue's empire crashed in 1903. New owners finally took the tracks to Mile 296 in Hearst ― but it's the famous Agawa Canyon at Mile 114 that everyone wants to see.
In an amazing engineering feat, the tracks coast down 150 metres onto the canyon floor, where Agawa Canyon Tour Train passengers can picnic, fish in the river or explore the trails that wind up to four waterfalls and a lookout platform 75 metres above the tracks. Extra cars are added to the train in autumn, when the canyon explodes in colour.
The scenery hereabouts is so ruggedly beautiful that in the early 1920s, several members of the Group of Seven were inspired to paint in the Algoma region. They would rent a boxcar from the railway to serve as a kind of cabin on wheels and have it shunted to sidings near choice painting locations. The artists also painted the wilderness landscapes between Lake Superior and Hudson's Bay, where today the Chapleau Game Preserve covers 700,000 hectares.
The world's largest game preserve is home to 119 species of birds and 49 types of animals, from North America's tallest (moose) to tiniest (pygmy shrews). The abundant wildlife includes black bears, timber wolves, lynx, mink and bald eagles. The only hunting is with cameras, although fishing is permitted in the hundreds of lakes and rivers.
Sault Ste. Marie proper also offers scores of attractions, most of them lining the bustling waterfront boardwalk ― packed by anglers and oglers during the Great Tugboat Race in June and a salmon derby in August. At the boardwalk's western tip, a walkway crosses to the Sault Ste. Marie Canal National Historic Site. Overlooking the boardwalk, the Sault Ste. Marie Casino pulses with slot machines and gaming tables. Also on the waterfront, the Roberta Bondar Park and Pavilion, a site for concerts, festivals and other events, features what's billed as the world's largest backlit mural as well as a bust of Canada's first woman astronaut, who in 1992 said from space, "I can see my home town."
The museum ship Norgoma, the last passenger cruise vessel built on the Great Lakes, is moored next to the park. Nearby, the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre is crammed with artefacts, from old aircraft to items from Bondar's flight aboard the space shuttle Discovery. For art buffs, there's the Art Gallery of Algoma, and for those who want to know more about the city's colourful history, there's the Sault Ste. Marie Museum, appropriately housed in a heritage building.
But the Soo's best show may be the two-hour dinner cruise on the Chief Shingwauk, which navigates the river and then travels through the Canadian lock and returns down the Michigan locks as the crew pours drinks and describes the sights.
source: Canadian Tourism Commision
This reproduction is not represented as an official version of the materials reproduced, nor has it been made in affiliation with or with the endorsement of the Canadian Tourism Commission.
Click here for more information on Sault Ste. Marie
BY PAUL KING and BARBARA FULTON
Sault Ste. Marie deserves far more attention than its reputation as a steel town. And the scenic Agawa Canyon is just one of many great reasons to visit.
The Soo, as the nation’s former steel capital is dubbed, may be a small city of 80,000 souls, but everything around it is massive. It's abutted by the world's largest freshwater lake, the world's busiest lock system and the world's biggest game preserve. It's also the hometown of Roberta Bondar, the first Canadian woman to fly into space.
Skirting the north shore of the St. Mary's River, today's tidy, tree-lined city was once an Algonquin village whose first European visitor was the famed French explorer Étienne Brûlé in 1610. When the North West Company founded a fur-trading post here in 1783, it also dug a canal so that its huge canoes could bypass the roiling rapids between the river and mighty Lake Superior.
That vast expanse, fed by 200 rivers, isn't just the world's largest freshwater lake (82,100 square kilometres). It's also the highest (180 metres above sea level) and deepest (plunging to 406 metres). Scientists say its total volume could cover North America with 30 centimetres of water.
To tap Superior's resources, the canal at Sault Ste. Marie was replaced in 1895 by the world's first electrically operated lock, which lifted ships 11 metres and formed the last of the 16 "water steps" in the 3,226-kilometre Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway System that links Superior with the Atlantic.
The addition of four huge locks on the Michigan side of the St. Mary's River in the 1900s made the Sault Ste. Marie canal system the world's busiest. Giant steel ships carrying more than 100 million tonnes of grain, lumber and coal pass through each year. In fact, the "Soo Canals" convey more tonnage in a day than both Panama and Suez do in a week.
Even the sky above the locks is filled with steel. Besides the arcing three-kilometre International Bridge (used by more than two million passenger vehicles a year), three massive railroad bridges also connect Ontario and Michigan. Below them on the Canadian bank, the lights of the sprawling Algoma Steel plant blaze through the night.
Steel and the Soo have been synonymous since U.S. industrialist Francis Clergue hit town in 1892 ― and iron ore was discovered in Wawa to the north. Foreseeing a fortune, Clergue lined up wealthy investors to develop 12 major industries, including a steel mill, a paper mill, two power and light utilities, two railways, a fleet of steamships and a streetcar system.
By the early 1900s, Clergue had built an industrial empire and his vision had virtually created the city. Yet it's his Algoma Central Railway that today lures more than 100,000 riders annually.
Construction began in 1899 to bring ore down from Wawa, with 2,000 men battling black flies and bush fires to lay track across plunging river ravines. The rails had stretched to Mile 56 when Clergue's empire crashed in 1903. New owners finally took the tracks to Mile 296 in Hearst ― but it's the famous Agawa Canyon at Mile 114 that everyone wants to see.
In an amazing engineering feat, the tracks coast down 150 metres onto the canyon floor, where Agawa Canyon Tour Train passengers can picnic, fish in the river or explore the trails that wind up to four waterfalls and a lookout platform 75 metres above the tracks. Extra cars are added to the train in autumn, when the canyon explodes in colour.
The scenery hereabouts is so ruggedly beautiful that in the early 1920s, several members of the Group of Seven were inspired to paint in the Algoma region. They would rent a boxcar from the railway to serve as a kind of cabin on wheels and have it shunted to sidings near choice painting locations. The artists also painted the wilderness landscapes between Lake Superior and Hudson's Bay, where today the Chapleau Game Preserve covers 700,000 hectares.
The world's largest game preserve is home to 119 species of birds and 49 types of animals, from North America's tallest (moose) to tiniest (pygmy shrews). The abundant wildlife includes black bears, timber wolves, lynx, mink and bald eagles. The only hunting is with cameras, although fishing is permitted in the hundreds of lakes and rivers.
Sault Ste. Marie proper also offers scores of attractions, most of them lining the bustling waterfront boardwalk ― packed by anglers and oglers during the Great Tugboat Race in June and a salmon derby in August. At the boardwalk's western tip, a walkway crosses to the Sault Ste. Marie Canal National Historic Site. Overlooking the boardwalk, the Sault Ste. Marie Casino pulses with slot machines and gaming tables. Also on the waterfront, the Roberta Bondar Park and Pavilion, a site for concerts, festivals and other events, features what's billed as the world's largest backlit mural as well as a bust of Canada's first woman astronaut, who in 1992 said from space, "I can see my home town."
The museum ship Norgoma, the last passenger cruise vessel built on the Great Lakes, is moored next to the park. Nearby, the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre is crammed with artefacts, from old aircraft to items from Bondar's flight aboard the space shuttle Discovery. For art buffs, there's the Art Gallery of Algoma, and for those who want to know more about the city's colourful history, there's the Sault Ste. Marie Museum, appropriately housed in a heritage building.
But the Soo's best show may be the two-hour dinner cruise on the Chief Shingwauk, which navigates the river and then travels through the Canadian lock and returns down the Michigan locks as the crew pours drinks and describes the sights.
source: Canadian Tourism Commision
This reproduction is not represented as an official version of the materials reproduced, nor has it been made in affiliation with or with the endorsement of the Canadian Tourism Commission.
Click here for more information on Sault Ste. Marie
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