frank panabaker, temagami's painter

a contemporary of the group of seven, frank panabaker (1904-1992) painted several times in temagami. unfortunately, i've been unable to find any images on the web of these paintings. one painting i'd particularly like to see is the red pines of lake temagami at manor hill fine art. following are some panabaker scenes from georgian bay.

can anyone place this quote?

i heard this many a year ago, but have been unable to find a source. if you know who originally said this, would you please leave a comment?

when I say the word temagami I feel like I’ve sung a song.

your dose of horses#!t for the week

you might like to see this redneck, bambi-killer attack on earthroots. you know you're making a difference and having an impact when someone cyber-squats on your domain and attacks you. keep up the good work, earthroots!

while you're at it, here's the real earthroots webpage.

are diamonds this girl's best friend?

on the subject of the economic future of temagami, our options are limited. i do believe that the forestry option is off the table for at least a generation. all of temagami's mills from the 1950's onward have closed, never to reopen, including the temagami forest products birch mill. that mill was a monumental waste of 10 years, where nearly all of the municipal council's economic development efforts went into that. as for tourism, i honestly don't see a major increase in the numbers anytime soon. true, visitor days will continue to increase slowly, with blips from things like flu outbreaks, u.s. government policy or road blockades. i do see hook and bullet tourism decreasing slowly while ecotourism increases slowly to offset those losses. what else is there? cottage and new home development will probably increase in importance to become a medium-size player. government and retail services won't create economic development on their own, they will simply respond to the growth in other areas.

so i see us in a generation of enhanced status quo, with one big wild card.

diamonds.

if any one development has the potential to knock us out of our rut of enhanced status quo, it is diamonds. temagami lies along the same geological formation on which de beers is developing the victor diamond mine west of attawapiskat.

at least two companies, tres-or and temex, are conducting advanced exploration in temagami. tres-or is working two properties, one near bay lake and the other near rib lake, while temex is working near wilson lake.

adroit resources provides a good overview of the diamond potential in temagami here.

would a diamond mine be a good thing for temagami? as an open pit, it would be a blight on the landscape, every bit as bad as the sherman mine. it would increase access pressure for motorized recreation elsewhere in the region. it wouldn't do anything to speed or slow timber extraction. it would raise property values and bring families into the nipissing-temagami-temiskaming shores area. housing development would increase, particularly on the lakes lining highway 11. municipal tax revenues would soar.

for another 25 years, temagami would be a rich little town, until the diamonds have all been dug up. i have no illusions however that the town would be able to use this windfall to secure its long term future.

why temagami should be a national park: reason #2

95% of temagami is public land. without having to purchase or expropriate land from private holders, creating a new park is a comparative breeze. park planners in other jurisdictions would kill for such a golden opportunity.

why temagami should be a national park: reason #1

but will they re-open temagami's mnr office?

osprey news is reporting that ontario pc leader john tory is advocating a decentralization of government ministries from big cities to rural and northern areas. "tory promised to decentralize the provincial government bureaucracy by setting a target for meaningful decentralization, say ten per cent, and move government offices from toronto into the regions. 'we can give a real shot in the arm by adding these jobs to smaller regional economies,' he said."

don't forget that this is the same ontario pc party that centralized government ministries from rural and northern areas to the big cities in the mid-1990s under mike "the axe" harris. the contempt of the pc party toward ontario's people is simply astounding. do they think we forgot that they closed temagami's mnr office in 1995, throwing over 50 jobs out of town and moving them to north bay?

north bay nugget

story of a hunter

there were two men living in a camp with two women and the rest of the band. on a cold day in winter one of the men said he was going to track a moose, and left on his snowshoes. he said he would be back by night. he was gone all day and by night he had not returned, so his wife began to think that possibly he had shot a moose, but, as he had taken his axe with him, he might have cut himself in some way. they waited until morning and then, taking up his trail, they tracked him to where he had shot a moose and farther on to where he had skinned it. the meat was there but the skin was gone. looking around they saw a fire not far off. when they reached the fire they discovered that the hunter had rolled himself up in the green hide to sleep, and during the night it had frozen around him and he had been unable to get out. they thawed out the skin and all went back to camp.

from frank g. speck, myths and folk-lore of the timiskaming algonquin and timagami ojibwa, canada geological survey, memoir 71, ottawa, 1915.

painting by robert bateman, winter sunset - moose.