Residests leave as
prospects are bleak but some will miss their Pleasantville
Date: Tuesday 19 July 2005
Source: Toronto Star
MANITOUWADGE, Ont.
"You know Wendell Ferguson's song 'Rocks and Trees and Trees
and Rocks?' He wrote that coming up here.
"Marilyn Hales is showing off the town - "Oh, turn
here! You've got to see this" - where she spent her
teenageyears, left and then came back.
The community centre, the library, the swimming
pool. The subdivisions of neat houses with well-kept lawns and flowerbeds,
the ski hill, the golf course, the churches. "Snob Hill,"
where the mine bosses used to live. The new high school, the new
hospital on Health Care Crescent, next to Clinic Court and Paramedic
Lane.
And, the dump, where a family of bears hangs out like an insolent
street gang, unconcerned about the people coming and going (who
are just as unfazed by the bears). The garbage trucks shedding their
loads? Meals on wheels. Thanks, guys.
"Bears are a problem," says Hales. "Everyone here
has a bear story."
"Just two days ago," says someone working in her
garden. "The biggest I've ever seen. Right in my
backyard. Crushed my trash can."
The gardener sounds almost proud.
Julio Orcoyen tees
up a shot at his aquatic driving range on Perry Lake. But hte area's
poor economy is a bogeyman to his venture.Photo
by Richard Lautens
There's a lot of pride in this tidy town of 3,300
people, floating in an endless sea of evergreens at
the end of Highway 614, about halfway between Sault
Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay. At first glance, it looks
like Pleasantville, the setting for a 1950s TV sitcom.
Every single fire hydrant is painted in a different
colour scheme, part of a contest last year to mark
Manitouwadge's half century. Two young girls downtown
have a lemonade stand on a wagon. You haul your
business to the customers.
"I'll miss the place," says
Hales.
She and her husband Rick are moving next summer to
London, Ont., where their daughter Christine is in
medical school and son Jason is an operatic tenor.
Their second son Dereck is a chartered accountant in
Toronto. Rick works at one of the three local
goldmines. The one that has given up all its ore and
is closing down.
Carolyn Clark and her husband Ron are moving, too,
back to her native Gaspe. "Mines don't go on forever,"
she says. "We got 20 years out of this one. We've
enjoyed living here. It's a good place to raise your
kids."
But as some of the gold goes out of "the Wadge," the
town has by no means lost all its shine. Houses here
are cheap - $30,000 gets you something nice - and as
mineworkers start upping stakes, retirees from
southern Ontario are moving in.
A remote northern mining and lumber town isn't where
you'd expect to find an aromatherapist, reflexologist
and therapeutic-touch specialist.
But that's how Hales, 54, has made her living for the
past 10 years, with a list of clients who are dreading
the loss of her magic fingers ... "like the best
quadruple-chocolate dessert you ever had," says Clark,
at the end of one of her regular hour-long massages.
Hales and her family - "My dad's still here, my
brother and my sister" - came to Manitouwadge in 1965.
Rick had already been here 10 years. His family moved
in right after the town was set up by the Noranda
mining company. There was a copper mine first, then a
series of gold mines.
The town's name comes from an Ojibwa word meaning
"Cave of the Great Spirit."
There are two grocery stores so locals no longer have
to order their supplies for delivery once a month.
Still, Hales says, "if anyone is driving to Thunder
Bay or the Sault, you give them a list of what you
need. If your dryer breaks down, as mine has, you
can't just drive into town and pick up a new one."
Her family moved away in 1970 but returned in 1983.
She and Rick met in high school.
"His locker was next to
mine. Manitouwadge has been
good to us. Going is ... frightening. But it's time.
Rick is a qualified fitness instructor and paramedic.
We don't like to fish and hunt - the northern things.
We like to eat out."
A lot of kids leave town after Grade 12 and, say
townspeople, not a lot come back.
But there's a website, www.thewadge.com - "dedicated
to you Ski-doo fixin', bootleggin', hotel-fightin',
rec-centre-sittin' gang of rough-and-tumble bushfolk"
- that's run by someone young enough to know the
technology inside out and be funny and cynical at the
same time "We'll be posting ... gossip about who has
what kind of new truck to the people that called this
place home or still do (shame on you). So sit back,
relax, put your nine babies to bed..."
Hales worries that the town is too remote to succeed
as a retirement community. "It's okay as long as
you've got your health. We have this beautiful
hospital but not the specialist care older people
need. My in-laws had to move away for just that
reason."
Julio Orcoyen runs an "aquatic driving range" on the
beach of Perry Lake, where you can whack floating golf
balls into the water. He dreams of expanding into a
bigger community "and make a lot of money. But it
takes money and I'm a poor man."
There's a place downtown with a sign saying "Nelson's
Bowl. Licenced. Laundromat, Bar and Grill."
A staffer at the hotel/motel says the place is pretty
full. Certainly the bar is jumping. It's 25-cent wing
night. Saturdays there's a Texas Hold 'em tournament.
Forest fires are breaking out farther north and that
brings in natural resources ministry workers by the
dozens.
"I tell my boss we're going to hell," the woman says.
"In winter, we pray for snow to bring in the
snowmobilers and the skiers. In summer ... well, not
to wish anyone bad but fires bring us business..."
And business is what the town needs most. That and new
blood.
"It's mainly couples moving here now," says Clark.
"Not families."
"Jason says he wants to come home one more time," says
Hales. "Home in winter. One last time."
She shrugs. "They're always prospecting. Maybe they'll
make another strike. Maybe there'll be another boom."
