Thunder Bay
Exploring Thunder Bay
Beauty is all around Lake Superior's biggest town.
To know Thunder Bay is to love Thunder Bay.
Lake Superior's largest town is hard to get to know, though, in part because it was two towns until 1970. No downtown pops out of the landscape; people driving through see only the flat sprawl of Fort William, then the hillier sprawl of Port Arthur.
But Thunder Bay's surroundings are spectacular: Mount McKay on the south, Kakabeka Falls to the west and Ouimet and Eagle canyons to the north.
Downhill in Thunder Bay
For a ski weekend, this friendly city belongs on the Eh list.
Thunder Bay is the Miss Congeniality of Canada — blessed but not beautiful, endearing yet not alluring.
Craggy bluffs flank this working-class town of 120,000 on one side, and Lake Superior on the other. But the candy-striped smokestack of a paper mill is the first thing seen by those who arrive by air or U.S. highway.
Beyond is an unremarkable sprawl of commerce and industry. But Thunder Bay's homeliness is only skin-deep to those who know
where to go: To the marina, where lovely sunsets frame the Sibley Peninsula with glowing bands of peach and slate-blue.
In the shadow of the Giant
In a provincial park wrapped by Lake Superior, campers exult in beauty.
On the northwest corner of Lake Superior, a 1,000-foot-high sleeping giant stretches across the horizon.
It’s mesmerized onlookers for millennia. In 2007, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. listeners voted it No. 1 of Seven Wonders of Canada, far outpolling Niagara Falls.
From Hillcrest Park in Thunder Bay, it looks exactly like a cigar-store Indian, with a square jaw and arms folded over a
powerful chest.
© Beth Gauper, 2007 - 2013 all rights reserved
