Thunder Bay, Ontario

 

When Janina and I crossed into Canada from Detroit in August we were waved right in with nary a question. This time at a much quieter crossing along Lake Superior with no one ahead of me and no one behind me, I was invited into an interrogation room and underwent a full-scale inquisition by an officer wearing a bullet-proof vest behind a glass window.  

He wanted to know if I had ever been finger-printed, had I been arrested, did I have cannabis, did I have firearms, how much money I was bringing into Canada, where I  would be staying, how long I would be in the country, where was I going, what was my profession, when was the last time I’d been in Canada, where I intended to exit Canada and plenty more. 

When he finished with the questions, he told me to take a seat while he checked out my answers.  I wasn’t too concerned other than maybe I didn’t have enough money as I told him I had one hundred dollars.  He didn’t seem to think that was enough and asked how I expected to pay for things.  I told him I had a couple of credit cards to which he wanted to know what limit I had on them.

He didn’t page through my passport and ask what I’d been doing in Brasil or Senegal or Mali or France.  Nor did he ask any questions about my vaccination status.  He accepted my story of coming to Canada to visit Carnegie libraries.  He wasn’t aware of them, but said he’d have to check out the one in Thunder Bay.  He only kept me waiting a few minutes before returning my passport and giving me permission to enter.

There’d been minimal traffic the forty miles from Grand Marais to the border and even less the forty miles to Thunder Bay, at least until I came within ten miles of it.  My last ten miles in the US were through an Ojibwa Reservation and the Grand Portage National Monument within the reservation near a casino.  The Monument is administered by the National Park Service and had a first-rate visitor center and the rebuilt trading fort that had been there.  It was one of the four main fur trading posts in North America during the 1700s.  Most of the commerce was provided by trappers of beavers.  An exhibit devoted to the beaver was entitled “The Rodent that Changed the World,” as the beaver is the animal kingdom’s largest rodent, and once was the most dominant creature of the region until its population was decimated almost to the degree of the buffalo and passenger pigeon. 

The parking lot was packed, mostly by retirees, many of whom had come to hike the eight-and-a-half mile Grand Portage from the Pigeon River to Lake Superior.  One old guy told me I ought to put mint leaves in my water bottle for taste and energy. I told him I well knew the pleasure of mint, as it is my drink of choice in France thanks to bottled mint syrup.

There was a long climb from the National Monument center on Lake Superior over Mount Josephine.  It afforded just the second overlook in the one hundred and fifty miles along its shoreline from Two Harbors.  Yellow stood out among the panoply of paper birch, quaking aspen, white spruce, balsam fir, white pine and northern white cedar trees that fill these northern forests.

Half a mile before I crossed the Pigeon River into Canada a sign warned “Customs, Border Protection.”  US Customs was on the opposite side of the road and only for those entering the country, so no one bade me farewell to the good ol’ US of A.    One of the first signs on the Canadian side announced that one was entering the Eastern Time Zone.  That came as a surprise, but Thunder Bay has a history of fudging its time zone, as it was the first city in the world to enact daylight savings time in 1908.

The road into Thunder Bay from the border went inland, depriving me of any more glimpses of Lake Superior.  The sprawl of the city of over one hundred thousand began more than five miles from it’s Carnegie.  The morning traffic was the equivalent of any urban area.  There was no significant downtown, as Thunder Bay was the amalgamation of three towns which combined in 1970.  There was a strong debate what to call the new city with Thunder Bay narrowly defeating Lakehead.  The Carnegie had actually been built in the town of Fort William, which was no more.  Wikipedia refers to Fort William as its location, making it tricky to initially locate.  

It was a large urban library and continues to function as such without need of expansion.  It was in a seedy part of the town with indigents hanging about.  I didn’t want to linger long inside lest one be tempted to liberate the tent or sleeping bag strapped to the back of my bike, a grim concern I must now take into account.

So far Canada isn’t much different from the US other than mask-wearing is more common, inside and outside, and rest rooms being identified as wash rooms and a different strand of Dollar Store called Dollarama. Plastic bags seem to be banned, as the grocery store had neither plastic nor paper.  One had to provide their own bag, as is the case in France, or buy a fabric bag at the checkout.

As all along Lake Superior, there has been a heavy overcast and an occasional drippy sky.  It is chilly and is only going to get chillier the further north I ride, fortunately not much more than one hundred miles.  The sun is much lower in the sky, so when it peeks through it doesn’t  provide much warmth.  At least I have a sleeping bag that keeps me plenty warm.