There is a lot of neat backyard in Northern Canada. Lady Evelyn River system is nice. Have to fly in or canoe, as only one road to the far end. I have flown into many areas of Canada, where you can still fish, and things are nice and quiet. Mostly the mineral areas. McGuinty don't want no more of that. After he walls off the Boreal nobody is going to fly 200 miles north of Red Lake into a remote lake for a picnic. Moose hunters and fishermen still fly in. Try getting permits for starting a business doing that. McGuinty says tourism. Huh? How the hell can a body support that without fly in permits, cottages, and attendants licenses for those who are willing to make those kind of treks? It ain't Wasaga Beach. There are no first aid station on Lake Gaga in the middle of nowhere. If you call out of the boat and hit your head on a rock out there, it is forever. It ain't for everybody. Even the Europeans don't come around anymore. That fishing and hunting lodge busines went out of fashion in the late 1960's. Trudeau government stopped issuing crown land use permits for lodges, and the existing lodge owners and fly in people were economy and travel fashion victims. American were going to the Islands, Hawaii, Europe. I saw on one tour of Lady Evelyn system precisely 3 canoe groups in a week. We travelled the Severn in the fifties and were all alone. I went down the Mattawa dozens of times. It ain't crowded. Most of the wilderness tourism, bear and moose hunting and fishing places have starved. Wilderness tourism is far overrated economically by the government. It only existed in the fast fifties and sixties to a degree. A tad in the 30's and 40's. By the 1970's it was all over. Where I lived there were more New York, Ohio, Iowa, and Illinois license plates in the summer than Ontario. Most CDN "tourism" today and in the past 30 years is visiting the CDN cities and towns, which are safe, and during the period of the mighty US dollar, were fairly cheap. If people come to a remote place, they have to have something to do. Roadside motels don't make it. If they don't have an activity to take part in back in the bush, save swat flies, then they ain't coming. It is all in Queens Park's imagination. There aren't a chain of tourist lodges, "Bush Hiltons" from the Albany to Sachigo River with cheapo float plane charters into the lakes they would sit on.
By 1955 the Canadian government told Norduyen that they would not allow them to make the Norseman aircraft anymore. Canada's only purpose built float plane for Northern flying. I don't really know why. The plane flew on for 40 years. Nobody makes the piston Beaver any more. Cessna aircraft are basically float plane history. The twin Beech fleet is out of business mostly. Stinson is no longer made. Bellanca too small, ditto Piper, not a real bush plane. A 1975 Twin Otter used costs $2 million. We are flying dinosaurs to get into the bush today. That tells me that routine small company and tourist access to Canada's wilderness will be completely over in 15 years. You will have to go back to dog team and canoe, like many did in the 20's, 30's and forties.
The land is surprisingly sensitive to fishing pressure. Not so much hunting which is far less lucky. But I have seen a few lakes fished out in time. Mostly by squads of over limit fishers. Some lakes, too big to fish out have been ruined by chemical dumping and pulp mills. (Lake Nipissing). The sad story of pulp and paper is that it has, like the St. Lawrence Seaway created no long term net benefit to the country. Only cut too many trees and ruined too many rivers.
If you just wanted to canoe and fish in beautiful Lake and River country there is more of it in Ontario than anywhere else. The water is for the most part drinkable and the fish for the most part edible.
Canadian politicians are committing economic suicide just like many of their grand public projects committed conservation suicide. Where are we going to find people who are committed to sane industrial policy and reasonable sustainable protection of resources? Junk science tree hugging is tiresome. A certain amount of it makes good sense. But most of the protectionists don't realize what man makes his bread and butter from. He takes things that grow and from rock and he builds a civilization. A certain amount of that is needed to sustain a civlization, which is built out of concrete, steel and other metals. We wear plant matter, and petrochemical, hides of animals. We eat animal matter and plant matter that we grow on cleared land. We communicate with metal wires. Our structures are coated with metals in chemical suspensions. We travel on silicate and tar conduits of billions of tons of concreted locally mine aggregates. Every item you touch and use throughout the day is a plant based, petrochemical based, or mined substance. Every part of our existence is based on the economy of supply of these substances.
We also need to live on a sustainable earth and we need to study how we can continue to do that. We should avoid desertification and overharvest of all materials, and poisoning of large tracts of land and water. To that latter end we should most carefully examine the spread of trace toxic petrochemicals and large scale government sponsored water works, power dams, and canals. Leaking or dumping by accident or design of millions of tons of oil into oceans is out. The Pacific Ocean, according to Thor Heyerdahl, who traveled closer to it for further than any one else reporting is an oil slick. One thing I know is that CDN mining did not do that.
We should eschew those really large scale projects if their impact is not fully known. So diverting a canal of water from the Great Lakes to Arizona is out. But a gold mine of 20 acres on the shore of a Lake in Northern Canada can be readily calculated and its effluent and impact controlled. It's all a matter of perspective and balance.
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