The parental units had decided to give me a few days off before I started school. How kind. I was supposed to attend the junior high in Haileybury, five miles to the north, right on the shore of big Lake Temiskaming. The first day after our arrival we all piled into the Jeep and made the trip up to that neighbouring town. We were surprised by what we saw.
Dad had made me read all about the area, so I had some idea about why the towns were the way they were. When the silver rush hit at the beginning of the last century, Haileybury was a log-cabin village in the wilderness, difficult to get to, essentially run by an old Hudson’s Bay Company operator named Charles Cobbold Farr. A bit of a dreamer, he had laid out an elaborate town plan for this beautiful spot of land on a tree-filled hill overlooking the lake many miles north of a depot he had once run, called Fort Temiskaming. But a place needs a good-sized group of people to be a real town. Most anyone coming to investigate the area in those days, either up the lake by canoe or overland by dogsled or snowshoe, would not have been impressed by what they saw. It was home to maybe a hundred adventurers and immigrants and millions of mosquitoes, with little more to offer than a crude wooden store and church, fish from the lake, and the friendship of local Indigenous peoples. Even when Farr helped to convince the Ontario government to send the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway from North Bay past his spot in the bush, there was little hope that Haileybury, named after Farr’s old school in England, would ever enter the modern world.
But then everything changed in an instant. A couple of railway workers were out in the woods about an hour’s canoe paddle south of the settlement, clearing trees for the right of way, when they saw something glinting in the rocks…shining like silver. Soon it seemed like the entire world was on its way to Temiskaming, and Cobalt burst out of the Canadian Shield like an explosion.
The big boys from the south, the mining executives and their wealthy investors, didn’t want to live on the side of a rocky hill. Cobalt, named for a magnetic metal found in its ores, would do for the workers and the fortune-seekers, but not for class. Beautiful Haileybury, with its spectacular view of the lake and the Quebec border in the distance, was perfect for them. Before long, while crude homes sprouted on the rocks of Cobalt at breathtaking speed (many without proper sanitation), elegant mansions began to rise at a slower pace along the green shores of Haileybury. There was a law in those days that no alcohol could be served any closer than five miles from a mine. Farr’s village, now rapidly becoming the town he had dreamed of, was exactly that distance from Cobalt. So Haileybury moved forward, growing to a total of five thousand wealthy folks in a couple of years, filling its streets with comfortable homes, social clubs, a professional racetrack, a rink for pro hockey, streetcars, and big, enviable hotels equipped with many bars and saloons.
The town soon had more millionaires per square mile than any place in Canada, more adventurers in its saloons than the Wild West, and more strange characters than you could put in a book. But it was to Cobalt that they all went to get the silver, and anyone who really rolled up their sleeves and got to work, who really got down into the darkness of the earth to seek his fortune, knew the dirt streets of Cobalt like the back of his blackened hands. Silver Street, Prospect Avenue, and others were soon packed with miners’ modest homes. Cobalt zoomed to ten thousand people overnight, a hard-working town with three-storey banks jammed into each other downtown, a large square in which the people could gather, dark headframes for the mines wherever you looked, and veritable cities of tents in the woods on its outskirts. Some said the area’s real population was actually near the twenty-five thousand mark.
And among the rich southerners making a killing was the mighty Lyon Brown of Bay Street, Toronto. Once or twice he even came north, always to Haileybury, where guests occasionally saw his stubby, well-manicured hands counting the silver money in the privacy of a suite in the Matabanick Hotel.
I was actually a little impressed as we toured around Haileybury. It was a real town. Pretty small (the sign said 4,800), but at least not creepy and falling apart. Why weren’t we living here? Most of the time I could care less about scenery, but even I had to admit that it was hard to beat the view from the highest point in the town—the hotels, homes, and schools of Haileybury, all nestled in front of a blue lake that stretched out like an ocean and seemed almost to touch the sky. Even in winter, bordered as it was by ice, it made me stare. I could only imagine how great it would be in the summer. As we drove northward beside the lake, moving along a road just metres from the water and lined by tall evergreen trees, we saw the beautiful old waterside houses that the millionaires had left behind. They stood up straight and high on the gentle hills, as sturdy as the day they were built.
A few kilometres farther north along the lake we came to New Liskeard, a slightly bigger town that actually had a little bustle to it, the last of the “tri-towns.” Driving through it and into the countryside, we were met by an astonishing sight: farms, and lots of them, big thriving operations with huge silos and large herds of cattle. What is this, I thought, agriculture in the arctic?
“There’s a little patch of wonderfully good land here,” said Dad from the front seat, smiling a little smugly. “When you drive up here in the summer, it’s even more amazing. Suddenly, after acres of forest, muskeg, and rocks, it all just opens up into this sort of green heaven. It’s like you’ve landed on another planet. There are lots of surprises in the north, champ.”
Yeah, well, surprise me with more than a hundred head of moo-cows and mountains of manure.
“Can we go back to Haileybury?” I asked.
“What for?”
“I want to check out the school. See what you’ve gotten me into.”
Mom reached back, almost secretively, and took my hand. She gave it a gentle squeeze and then let go, without ever turning around. Mom’s not such a bad sort, really.
It was the middle of the afternoon, so the school looked deserted. But I could sense that classes were in session inside. It just had that feel to it. The one that told you that hanging out and having fun was on hold.
It was a large brick building, two storeys, and old. A little like some of the dinosaurs in Toronto, but not like my own. Through the windows in the upper level I could see a computer screen or two. Well, they’re not entirely in the dark ages, I supposed.
As our Jeep moved past the school, I turned my attention towards the road ahead. But just as I did, I glimpsed the front door opening and a bright-red coat appearing. Above it I noticed a glow of long, wavy blond hair. I smiled. “Hey,” I said. Unfortunately, I said it out loud. What was I thinking?
“What was that?” asked my father, slowing.
“Uh, nothing.”
“No, you said something,” said my mother. She turned and noticed that I was looking back at the girl. “Stop for a second, John.”
No, don’t stop.
I turned around and faced the front of the car, my heart thumping for some reason.
“Do you know her?” asked Mom.
“Who?” said Dad, and he squirmed around in his seat, trying to look back. The girl had turned on to the sidewalk and was moving right towards us. “Oh, hello,” continued Dad, rolling down the window. “Hi, miss! Miss?”
The girl smiled and moved up to the window.
“I’m John Maples, this is my wife, Laura. We’re from Toronto.”
“I know,” said the girl.
“You do?”
“This is our son, Dylan,” said Mom, “slumping in the back seat here. But I believe you two already know each other.” She seemed to be almost smirking.
The girl smiled too, as if she and Mom were in on a joke.
Here we go, a female conspiracy. I looked weakly up at the girl and tried a smile.
“Well, sort of. I guess that was you, in that space suit?”
Oh great, a space suit. I must have looked like a real idiot.
“My name’s Wynona. Wynona Dixon. But my friends just call me Wyn.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Wynona,” said my dad. “Dylan here is going to be in your school. In grade…what is it, Dylan, grade three?”
“Grade eight!” I shouted from the back. This was not a time for jokes.
“Oh,” said Wynona, seeming a little shy for the first time, “same grade as me.” She looked at me for a second and our eyes met. We both looked away.
“I’m here to do some legal—” started Dad.
“Oh, I know why you are here, Mr. Maples. And I don’t mean to be rude. But I’ve got to get going.”
Her tone had changed so suddenly that it took every occupant of the Jeep by surprise. She turned quickly and moved away. For a moment Dad just sat still looking after her, but then he put the Jeep in gear and moved forward.
“Well, I guess I’m going to be the bad guy around here,” he sighed.
“Yes you are,” said Mom flatly.
As the Jeep moved past Wynona Dixon, walking with her face up, shoulders squared, hatless blond hair blowing in the cold air, my father beeped. She didn’t turn. But when we were half a block away, I screwed up the courage to look back at her. Just as I did, she raised her head and stared at me. I quickly turned away.