Photos by Mike Lawrence
Wilderness Corridor Rooted in the origins of Canada, no paved road in Ontario takes you further north into Canada’s unspoiled wilderness then Highway 599. Pickle Lake is known as “the official end of the road”—the most northerly community in Ontario accessible by road year round. The paved road ends and the ice roads begin.
Highway 599 is intersected by two large rivers, the English and the Sturgeon, both of which were travel corridors for the First Nations People while Egyptians were still building their pyramids. Pictographs drawn on cliffs at the water’s edge still tell the tales of these early nomads. On your journey to Pickle Lake you will follow the West Shore of Sturgeon Lake. Although the lake teems with lake trout, walleye and northern pike, there has never been a sturgeon in it. So why the name? Common belief is that the name came from the Sturgeon Cree of Nipigon who were encountered on the lake by French traders in the early 1700s. The Cree used Sturgeon Lake to reach Fort Albany where they sold furs. The lake has quite the colourful past in the fur trade with both the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Company establishing posts on its shore. Recent history of the Pickle Lake area dates back to the fur trade—in 1786 the Hudson Bay Company established the Osnaburgh House trading post on the shores of Lake St. Joseph. Harvesting furs remained the most prominent industry in the area until 1928, when gold was discovered along the banks of the Kawinogans River. Pickle Lake, being the closest lake to the two new gold mines at Pickle Crow and Central Patricia, became the transportation centre of the area. Over the 50 years of mining history in the area, Pickle Lake, like most mining communities, experienced a series of booms and busts. The first bust occurred in 1951, when the Central Patricia Gold Mine closed. After 30 years and 1.5 million ounces of gold, the Pickle Crow gold mine stopped production in 1966, bringing an end to the boom which had started in 1935. From then, Pickle Lake experienced further series of boom and busts with the opening and closing of the Umex Thierry Mine, Placer Dome Inc. Mine and Bond’s Gold Mine. Although no longer a typical mining town, the history of the mines still drives the working spirit of the community. Pickle Lake was incorporated as a township in 1980 which includes the sites of Central Patricia and the decommissioned site of Pickle Crow.
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Northern Experience Magazine 2018/19
