Sault Ste Marie, Ontario

As summer 2018 comes to a close (it's 0 degrees in Edmonton today!) I am starting out on the next piece of my cross-Canada bicycle trip.

Yesterday afternoon I landed at YAM, Sault Ste. Marie's airport, having flown here via Toronto.

I picked up a rental car and drove straight to Velorution, a bike shop on the north side of Sault Ste. Marie.  I had prearranged for them to do a tune up on my bike, although when I pulled it out of the box it was looking to be in nearly perfect shape.

My bike safely in the good hands of Velorution, I drove into Soo and checked in at my hotel.  Since then, I have been exploring the city.

Last night I went downtown and to the waterfront of the St. Mary's River, whence Sault Ste. Marie gets its name. 

Actually, "sault" means rapids or waterfalls in archaic French, so specifically Sault Ste. Marie's name comes from the rapids of the St. Mary's River.  The rapids forced travelers to stop here while passing between Lake Huron and Lake Superior, and since the late 1800s there have been locks to allow shipping to get by the rapids and up to Lake Superior/down to Lake Huron, depending on the direction of travel. 

This morning I went north along Lake Superior to hike for an hour at a place called Robertson Cliffs.

The weather was lovely, but, sadly, I failed to realize that the morning fog would prevent a good view from the cliffs.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the hike.

From Robertson Cliffs I drove back into Sault Ste. Marie and to the Sault Ste. Marie Canal National Historic Site.

The historic site is the single set of locks that have ever been on the Canadian side of the river here, and they were built after the Americans refused to allow a steamer full of Canadian soldiers through their locks in 1870.  The soldiers were headed for Thunder Bay and, eventually, further west into the land Canada was purchasing that very year from the Hudson's Bay Company (more-or-less what is now Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta), and presumably the Americans (who seem to have on occasion thought that land might end up theirs) were not so keen on helping Canada assert sovereignty in the west.

Today, the locks that are the final piece of the St. Lawrence Seaway are on the American side, but the Canadian locks are again operational now for recreational purposes.

Besides the historic locks and associated buildings, this site also includes Whitefish Island, which also has an interesting history involving Canada attempting to assert sovereignty and winding up embarrassed.  In this case, Canada expropriated the island from the local Anishinaabe people in the 1890s before finally returning it in the late 1990s.  Meanwhile, during the nearly 100 years of Canadian control, the Anishinaabe burial grounds were removed and the fish spawning location nearly destroyed.  Now, however, apparently Canada and the First Nation jointly manage the island, since it is both a reserve and part of the historic site.

After coffee, lunch, a stroll, and novel shopping at Sault Ste. Marie's only used bookstore, The Skeleton Key, I next headed to Algoma University's Shingwauk Hall.

The tragedy of Whitefish Island is nothing compared to this place, despite how glorious it looks today in the sun and against the blue sky.  While now a part of the university campus, the hall spent its first 35 years of life (1935-1970) as an Indian residential school.  Interestingly, this school's origins (long before the current building was built) seem quite positive, and involved the Anishinaabe Chief Shingwauk's advocacy to have what he termed a "teaching wigwam."  Shingwauk envisioned his people learning the best of Euro-Canadian ways in this wigwam, while of course remaining Anishinaabe.  Needless to say, by the time this hall was built with his name on it, what was happening was quite different than he had imagined.

Algoma University has done an amazing job of turning a floor of the hall into a exhibit, and I spent half an hour or so going through it.

When I was done, Velorution had my bike ready, so I drove there to pick it up.  They seem to have done a great job.  I also needed a new helmet, and, after trying on one with a price tag of $345(!), chose one that cost $120.

I drove the bike back to the hotel, then dropped the car off across the street (Enterprise let me drop the car from the airport in town here, which is nice, because otherwise I would have had to drive out to the airport and cycle back, and each way is 20+ kilometres).

Now I should be all set to start out tomorrow, east towards Ottawa!