The Towns and Cities
of Northern Ontario
Elliot Lake Ontario - Algoma Country
For centuries the Elliot Lake area
was loved by the Ojibwa people because it was simply overrun with
wild game and fish (some things don't change much with time).
Logging, and later uranium mining, brought great prosperity and
growth to this community. Today Elliot Lake has become a popular and
peaceful retirement village and true vacation paradise.
Elliot Lake is a small modern city with
good shopping and amenities. You should start your visit with a drive
round the Deer Trail, a 120 km driving tour with lots of stops along the
way to inform you of the history, geology, and natural life of the area.
Of course the scenery along this drive is the real reason it's worth the
gas money. This is a really beautiful area, and that's saying something
in a province with the kind of natural beauty we are so privileged to
have around us.
Elliot Lake offers many things for a
vacationing family to do. There are several museums, some of the best
hiking trails offered anywhere, kayaking or canoeing, windsurfing, and
beaches. All offered almost within the city itself! And as always in the
North, there's great fishing, hunting, boating, snowmobiling, skiing and
camping everywhere you look.
Elliot Lake also hosts a number of events
and festivals, all year round, that are entertaining and interesting to
participate in. Ojibwa craft, history, and culture is very much in
evidence and offers a window into the very recent past of this area.
Just west or north of town the Mississagi
River scenery will take your breath away. If this landscape does not
swell your heart and give you a feeling that you've become a part of
something grand you're half dead already.
As you turn north onto highway 108 and
begin the drive into Elliot Lake there's a sense that you are leaving
something behind. There's a quiet that begins to descend, a tingling
sense of history moving closer. In the town itself the mining legacy is
very much in evidence. The town is not a picturesque town, but it is an
interesting place.
Just minutes of walking into the bush
will take you quickly into another time and place and give you a taste
of what this area would have been like only short decades ago. On a good
day you will startle deer, see beaver building their dams, eat scads of
sun warmed berries, and breath deep of a time not so far gone after all.
