Canada Travel: Patricia

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Patricia

The district of Patricia, added to Ontario in 1912 is estimated to have an area of 135,070 square miles. To the geographic region, however, one must add nearly all of Northern Ontario beyond easy reach of the railway lines thus making an area of at least 175,000 square miles in which the dominant activity is hunting and trapping. Perhaps we should now use the term wild life management since, for the most part, trap-lines and areas have been registered, so that the owner may be assured of the returns from the use of conservational methods in handling the wild life resource. Most of the trappers are Indians, native to the region.

The Patricia Mining Camps

The mining camps at Red Lake, central Patricia and Pickle Crow are good examples of isolated development. Discovered in 1925, Red Lake was for years accessible only by airplane or canoe in summer or dog team in winter. Temporary winter freighting roads were built and later an all-year highway was constructed linking Red Lake with Vermilion, a point on Highway 17, about 25 miles west of Dryden. A similar road is to link Pickle Crow to Sioux Lookout by way of Savant Lake. A hydro-electric power plant at Ear Falls on the English River supplies energy to Red Lake, Pickle Crow and Sioux Lookout.

Geographic Reality

Map shape and space relations make it easy and, in fact, necessary to deal with Northern Ontario as a unit apart from the older and more densely settled areas of the province. The geographer, however, finds it somewhat difficult to demonstrate that the area possesses true regional unity, either from the standpoint of homogeneity or through the development of complementary and reciprocal human relations. On a smaller stage, unity may be demonstrated in the emerging settlement areas discussed in this chapter but, apart from similarities in certain major problems, they have little coherence. They have not, for instance, been able to get the Ontario Government to construct adequate transprovincial highways. Northwestern Ontario often feels more akin to Western Canada than to the eastern and southern parts of the province.

There are even those who advocate the secession of this region to form a new province to be named Aurora. No doubt northern resources have received some unwise and shortsighted administration from the provincial capital. This has, in no small measure, been the direct result of ignorance of the geographical realities. The major natural resources are forests, minerals and water power but they are by no means uniformly distributed. Processing and manufacturing, based upon mine and forest products, are important and will become greater in the future.

All of these activities tend toward a highly nucleated urban type of settlement. Agriculture is and will continue to be a minor industry. Combined with primary forestry, however, it may help to support dispersed settlement in certain areas. Ontario may be a province in spite of geographical differences, but it can develop fully only when these differences are recognized and understood. At present, however, Northern Ontario stands in need of intensive geographical research.