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Foreword

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The most notable production of Northern Ontario has not been its silver or its gold, its sawlogs, pulp and paper or its fertile farms. Great as all these have been and much as they have added to the wealth and stability of Canada, they are out-classed as distinctive achievements by the people of the country. These are truly a product of the North Country. It took them as they came, a heterogeneous crew, and, rejecting the unfit through lack of spirit and lack of hardihood, moulded them to its heart’s desire. It was a stern school which demanded courage, dogged fortitude and a strong measure of gaiety from all its pupils. There were hardships, discouragements and many forms of death to face and overcome. Good men died in its holocausts. Lonely graves are marked with a twelve-inch blaze at the foot of its rapids. The lakes took their toll and so did falling timber and premature explosions. But, through it all, they persisted and, millionaire or railway navvy, they finally received the accolade that dubbed them as true Northerners. They are a special race of men, these Northerners and the hall mark of their guild is still plainly to be seen.

In the beginning, they were a heterogeneous crew. They hailed from the four corners of the earth and from all its seven seas. Settlers came, by boat up the long stretch of Lake Temiskaming, from abandoned southern farms and straight from England. Railway construction crews came from wherever jobs were scarce and many stayed as section-men along the line. With the Cobalt rush, came miners from the hard-rock counties of Eastern Ontario, from the Yukon, British Columbia and Nova Scotia. They came from Butte, Nevada and New Mexico, from Kalgoorie, the Rand, South China and the Malay States. There were Cousin Jacks, Scots and Englishmen, with Irish from the North and South. There were French, Finns and Scandinavians; navvies, mule skinners, muckers, miners, axemen, river drivers, sawyers, blacksmiths and men whose only stock-in-trade were strong backs and optimism. Very notably, they came from Renfrew, Pembroke and Calabogie.

The Northland took them all and taught them its own code of ethics. It was simple and it was adequate. A man learned to stand on his own feet and he learned to help his fellow in distress. The latter was imperative regardless of danger, self-interest or inconvenience. For all that there was claim-jumping on occasion, a man’s personal property was inviolable in the bush. Food, canoes and snowshoes, on which life might depend, could be cached with the full assurance that they would be found intact when wanted. Yet a well-stocked cache of food could be drawn on in dire necessity but such loans were always scrupulously repaid. They were all good fellows or they did not last. The land that could not break them taught them to love it with a deep passion which seldom found expression.

For all that the Northland minted them with its own stamp, they remained rugged individualists. Jack Munro, Mayor of Elk Lake and heavy-weight contender, wore no man’s strait-jacket. Bob Potter, with fifty-four years of the North behind him, is still the Northerner par excellence. Kindly, humorous and straight, he has the same optimism which led him as a boy to Lake Temiskaming in ’98. Smith Ballantyne, whose prodigious packing feats are legendary, still works, after fifty years of work, for the land he loves. There is Ken Ross, of Varsity football fame, who ranged the country far and wide from the turn of the century, surveying, prospecting and building transmission lines. He too was moulded by its code. Their name is legion. Humble men with honoured names and human frailties; Hollinger, Gillies, Wilson, Preston, McIntyre and Horne. Then there were characters like Father Paradis, who drained Frederick House Lake with a shot or two of dynamite. This act caused more than raised eyebrows in official circles and Father Paradis’ attempt to colonize the arid silt exposed did nothing to avert their censure. Frederick House Lake today reflects the blue skies for miles on the way to Timmins but Father Paradis is forever part of the Northland’s story.

The rush to the Northland of Ontario began in earnest fifty years ago. Though much remains, the memories of those days are dying fast. Since folk-lore, the most ephemeral of essences, supplies the high-lights which make history a vital story, it was felt that some at least of the feeling of those days should be preserved. An attempt has been made in these stories to record something of the gaiety of those fading times. They are not tales of heroism or of high emprise. The Northerner was a hard-working man who could not have worn a hero’s bays with any degree of comfort. Rather they attempt to recall the flavour of the times. If some of the incidents are true, it is hoped that they are none the worse for that. Those that are invention pure and simple conform in general pattern with incidents which did take place.

If it is asked whether Mullins is a real person, it may assist to recall that an old timer at Kirkland Lake said that he could not remember his being at Boston Creek. Since the old timer was notoriously forgetful, this might be taken as proof positive. I can only say that I have lived with him during the past seven years and he is as real as I can make him. You will find him today, under half-a-dozen names, at lonely stations along the line, in little country stores, in cookhouses at lumber camps and at mine bunk-houses in the bush. Annie, a bit shrewder than Mike, is the Northern woman, all honour to her, who shared adversity and disaster with her man and won through to a placid life, looking back without regret. O’Rourke may do a bit of bootlegging on the side but he is a good fellow for all that. And so are they all who observe the Northland’s code.

If Mullins serves the purpose of giving some amusement, he will ask no better. For my part, if he has succeeded in recording something of the life of Northern Ontario in those old formative days, I am content.

—O.T.G.W.

North Bay, September 24, 1952

Mike Mullins of Boston Crick

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