A Writer's Words - Episode Six: a Boomtown

One Writer’s Journey: The Book Tour

By Jill Culiner

Episode Six: a Boomtown (almost the Wild West)

I break my journey westward across Canada in Thunder Bay, once known as a wild place, a Gomorrah. Originally called Prince Arthur’s Landing — this was a landing stage for immigrants arriving by steamer from Toronto, some 780 miles east — the city’s name was changed because the word “landing” wasn’t to the taste of residents who preferred a more upmarket image.

After silver was discovered in 1868, Thunder Bay became as wild and woolly as any American boomtown. “Ruffians and rebels, the poor, the uneducated, the pioneers with a hunter-trapper mentality” all flocked into town, but many a get-rich-quick dream came to naught. Salaries disappeared into the bottomless pockets of greedy boardinghouse landlords or were spent on doctored alcohol in the many tent saloons with their sawdust floors and spittoons, or in the bawdy taverns that opened at dawn.

In the summer, vicious stray dogs roamed the streets and scavenged for food — they were used in dog trains in winter. The crystal-clear waters of Lake Superior and the Arthur Street stream became dumping grounds for human waste and offal; cholera and typhoid epidemics spread like wildfire; and by 1870, there was sufficient pollution to guarantee that the waters remained contaminated for the next thirty years.

When the price of silver collapsed after 1890, an economic depression followed. But the Canadian Pacific Railway line, completed in 1883, guaranteed that immigrants continued to pass through town. Some disembarked and settled.

In 1893, a case of smallpox was reported in one of the carriages of an immigrant train traveling between Schreiber and Thunder Bay. Everyone panicked. The passengers were forbidden to disembark, and local natives threatened to shoot anyone who did. As a precaution, the train’s windows and ventilation shafts were closed down.

The desperate passengers — there were seventy-four men, women and small children packed into one carriage — said there was no water left, the toilet was blocked, and there was no air to breathe, but the train continued to shunt back and forth along the line all night.

The next day, it was finally permitted to stop outside of Thunder Bay where a small patch of land was staked out so the immigrants could walk around and fetch water. Local women did take pity on these unfortunates, and they provided them with clothing and food.

*** 

Determined to see what’s left of the past, I head into town. The bus terminal is on a busy four-lane road way out in the back of beyond, so I go up to the smiling young woman at the information counter and ask for directions to the center.

Her smile immediately disappears. “What do you mean, the center?”

“Downtown. Where the library is. The main part of Thunder Bay.”

She reflects for a good long while. “Well, there’s the shopping mall across the road. You’ll find everything you want there. Winners, McDonald’s. All the chains.”

“No. It’s the old center, I’m looking for.”

She frowns, turned to her co-worker. “She wants to know where downtown is.”

“The old part,” I prompt. “The original part of town. The area that existed long before the shopping mall.”

“There’s only the mall,” says the second young woman with bland certainty.

There must be something left here that isn’t a mall, so I set out along the roaring road, then duck into a Mexican food joint.

The sweet young thing with flaxen hair behind the counter greets me: “Hi. How’s your day been so far?”

I think that’s a rhetorical question — or, at least, I hope it is. “Could you please tell me where the town center is?”

“Well, there’s the mall just up the road.”

I do find the center…eventually. It’s a mile or two away, past the fast-food joints, the furniture warehouses, tire centers, gas stations, used car lots, and video rental shops. And there are still a few vestiges of the past too — not a whole lot of them — but a few. Some turn-of-the-century square brick buildings do lend the town some atmosphere. But in the library, I find photos of all that has vanished: high, elegant Victorian frame buildings with broad terraces; red brick vernacular architecture; tree-lined roads.

*** 

A very curious story is told by Joseph M. Mauro in his, Thunder Bay: A History: The Golden Gateway of the Great Northwest.
     In 1908, the Paquette Dam on the Current River burst, and floodwaters severely damaged the railway bridge, causing a westbound freight train to derail. It plummeted down into the swirling waters of the river, killing train engineer Joseph Savard, brakeman Albert Inman, fireman James Mc Bride, and two hoboes who happened to be aboard. Albert Inman shouldn’t even have been on the train; he had traded places with someone else because he didn’t want to wait two hours for his scheduled run. The only two to survive the wreck were rear brakeman Ed Geroux, and conductor George Roos.
     Shortly after the crash, Geroux moved west, but within a few months, he died in another accident. Roos resigned from the Canadian Pacific — perhaps he was worried that his luck just might run out — and started a small business in the town of Schreiber, 127 miles away. Only a few months later, he died in a canoeing accident. Thus, within a year, the entire crew of the ill-fated train had died in accidents: rumor said that fate had pursued them.

*** 

There are no longer tent bars on the main street, of course, and the spittoons and sawdust have vanished along with the scavenging dogs. In the bars that remain, video clips have replaced talk of silver, but perhaps there’s still a bit of that old-time spirit in Thunder Bay: in 2012, this city had the highest per-capita rate of homicides in Canada; in 2014, the per-capita rate of homicides in Thunder Bay was more than double the 2012 rate.

I return to the bus station to wait for the night bus to Winnipeg. On the television screen right above my head, there are exploding vehicles, screams of suffering, hysteria, great violence, car chases, and police sirens: this is the modern Hollywood version of today’s Wild West.

©2019 Jill Culiner All Rights Reserved
Long ago, J. Arlene Culiner set out to have a life of adventure, not one of security and comfort. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, traveled, by bus, train, car, or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, in a haunted stone house on the English moors, and presently in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village. Her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters and very odd conversations are incorporated into all her stories.
http://www.j-arleneculiner.com