Sudbury, Ontario - The Big Nickel

According to the current Greater Sudbury Tourism Guide, Sudbury has "one of the largest concentrations of nickel-copper sulphides sulphides in the world" along with other great stuff to mine. A scary thing I learned reading this guide is that "there are 5,000 km of mining tunnels under the Sudbury area and placed end-to-end, you could drive to from Sudbury to Vancouver underground." Yikes!

So, here is The Big Nickel, a landmark honouring the mining industry in Sudbury (which I used to see every day from my bedroom window). It was freshly polished for the arrival of my friends and I!

After the nickel has been taken from the rock it is poured out at the temperature of molten lava.

Here is a pot being dumped. This is what we would actually see from our house at night.

This is slag that has cooled.

Killarney, Ontario

We didn't go into Killarney Provincial Park but we went into town. This description from the Provincial Park website gives a good overview of this area on Georgian Bay.

"Considered one of Ontario Parks’ crown jewels, this majestic, mountainous wilderness of sapphire lakes and jack pine ridges so captivated artists – including The Group of Seven’s A.Y. Jackson – that they persuaded the Ontario government to make it a park. Once higher than the Rocky Mountains, La Cloche’s white quartzite cliffs gleam like snowy peaks from afar. Where paddlers, hikers, skiers and snowshoers now journey through in this craggy, imposing landscape, there is evidence that others passed thousands of years before." Description taken from here.

We ate our fresh fish and chips here.

The French River, Ontario

We stopped in the French River. I used to view the river from the shore but now there is a green bridge so you can cross it.

Overlooking the French River.

If you look closely, you can see the trees growing along the waterline.

This is the Highway 69 bridge.