Nipissing. Françoise Noël

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      Map 2. The Nipissing Passageway represented a considerable challenge to railway construction. After investigation, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) chose a route to the north of Lake Nipissing, thereby providing the impetus for the growth of a town at North Bay. The Northern Railway of Canada connected the main CPR line at Nipissing Junction with Toronto. This line was later purchased by the Grand Trunk Railway. A branch of the CPR opened the Temiskaming area to settlement prior to 1900, but much of northern Ontario remained difficult to reach. Competition and optimism led to several more rail lines being constructed in the early twentieth century. The construction of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario from North Bay cemented its role as the “gateway to the north.” When both the CPR and the Canadian Northern Railway built lines through the French River District in 1908, that area could be reached directly, bypassing North Bay. Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk lines were later assimilated into the Canadian National (CNR) system.

      The CPR, as Canada’s first transcontinental railway, and the first Canadian railway to provide access to the Canadian Rockies, focused its early publicity material on the west, with information on the prairies aimed at immigrants and advertising on the Canadian Rockies and Banff, Canada’s first national park, aimed at elite travellers. It continued to promote summer excursions to established destinations such as Montreal and Quebec City in the east. Its guides were directed toward American tourists as well as Canadians. In these early guides, the Lake Nipissing area received only a passing mention. In Summer Tours,[23] for example, Callander was noted in passing as a destination to which tourist tickets were issued for access to Lake Nipissing, and no description of the region was given. As sportsmen’s holidays increased in popularity, however, the CPR decided to create some new publicity material aimed at sports fishermen. To give their guide more credibility, they had it endorsed, if not written, by the “commissioners” of The Canadian Sportsman. The result was Fishing Resorts Along the Canadian Pacific Railway, issued in 1887.[24] As the subtitle indicated, they were particularly interested in trout, bass, and makinonge, all high in the hierarchy of game fish. From that perspective, the Lake Nipissing area fared well and the guide devoted several pages to the area before going on to discuss the famous Lake Nipigon area. The CPR’s 1893 Shooting and Fishing Along the Line[25] was essentially an expanded version of Fishing Resorts, with the addition of information on hunting. The language describing the area and references to fishing remained almost without change.

      Guides published in the nineteenth century were very dependent on text to make their point, using wood engravings based on drawings and sketches, often sparingly, to supplement the text. Railway maps showing the routes discussed were commonly added as well. The large colour fold-out map included in Cumberland’s The Northern Lakes of Canada is therefore a very distinctive feature of that guide. Unlike most maps, it has a horizon with blue sky and in the left corner a yellow sun beams, giving the entire landscape a golden glow. The map clearly shows the ease of access to the “Northern Lakes” from Toronto, with Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, and New York also well within range and with many rail connections to Toronto. As distance from Toronto increases, built-up areas decrease and the number of lakes and rivers increases. Careful selection of geographical information meant the area between Toronto and Lake Nipissing was represented as one easily reached by rail, filled with lakes and connecting rivers, and void of urban interruption — a perfect sportsman’s paradise.