WAWA, ONTARIO

'Wawa, Ontario' is a community in Northern Ontario, Canada, located in Michipicoten Township in the Algoma District. The community is known for its 28-foot-tall metal statue of a Canada goose, which was built in 1963. Wawa takes its name from the Ojibwe word for "wild goose", ''wewe''.
The community is located on Highway 101, just a few kilometres east of the junction with Highway 17. Sault Ste. Marie is located approximately 220 km south. Lake Superior Provincial Park is located just south of Wawa.
Wawa's history is rich in mining, forestry and the fur trade. Although mining attempts began as early as the late 1660s, it wasn't until 1896 that gold was discovered on nearby Wawa Lake which led to a rush to the area. The population grew from a handful of people to approximately a thousand people.
In 1898 the town site at the Mission was registered as "Michipicoten City". In 1899 Wawa was surveyed and plotted into a town and registered as Wawa City.
Production had slowed by 1906 but as mining technology improved, additional amounts began to be extracted from the area. Gold mining in the Wawa area prospered and receded several times in the 20th century and continues today.
Iron ore extraction has also been an important industry in the area. The community was served by the Algoma Central Railway.
The search for the elusive precious yellow metal during the Michipicoten gold boom led to the unexpected discovery of iron ore in 1897. Rock samples made their way into the hands of Francis Hector Clergue, an American entrepreneur who at once recognized the ore for its potential in the form of a steel company in the industrial future of Sault Ste. Marie.
The first supply of ore extracted form the Helen Mine was shipped to Midland, Ontario in July 1900 and thus became the "first boat shipment of Canadian iron ore to a Canadian port." The mine produced high grade iron ore until 1903 when operations shut down due to financial difficulties which were confronting Clergue and his company. By 1904 the mine returned to full production capabilities and was mining 1000 tons of hematite ore a day. From 1900 to 1918 the Helen Mine had the largest production of any iron mine in Canada during that period.
In 1909 a second hematite ore deposit was uncovered near the Magpie River 12 miles north of the Helen Mine. The Algoma Steel Corporation, organized between 1904 and 1909 in Sault Ste. Marie, bought up the claims and operated both the Magpie and the Helen Mine for the next decade.
The Helen Mine continued ore production until the year 1918 when they felt the reserve of hematite ore was finally depleted. The same fate was followed by the Magpie Mine in 1921. The Census of Canada records that the population of the Michipicoten region in 1921 experienced a drop from 1001 in 1911 to 101 ten years later.
It was not until 1937 with the threat of war in Europe and the emergence of a profitable market for Canadian iron ore, that the Helen Mine was re-opened. A sintering plant was constructed on the northern bank of the Magpie River two miles west of the mine to treat the siderite ore before shipping it to the blast furnaces at Algoma Steel in the Sault. The plant became the centre for a small community of workers and their families called Sinterville.
The Helen Mine remained an open pit operation until 1950 when all production was from underground mining. In 1960 the new George W. MacLeod Mine went into production adjacent to the Helen Mine. The ore was transported on an aerial tramline which consisted of over 280 steel, 3 ton buckets travelling underground and surfacing three quarter miles west of the 2066 foot vertical MacLeod Shaft, then continuing the remaining two miles to the sinter plant on overhead cables. In 1979 this system was replaced by the latest in underground mining technology, the highest lift single-drive conveyor in the world.
Throughout the nineties, Algoma Ore and Wawa continued to be challenged by international markets that plagued both the gold and iron mining industries. In December of 1997, Algoma Steel announced that they could no longer support the high cost of extracting low grade iron from Algoma Ore. Even though Wawa's mountain of iron ore still had more to give, operations were shut down in June of 1998, 100 years after iron was first discovered in this remote corner of Northern Algoma.
Wawa suffered a population decline after the Helen Mine and Algoma Ore Division sinter plant shut down, leaving its main industries as forestry and tourism. In recent months, diamond prospecting and proposals to create a trap rock mine on the shore of Lake Superior have created new excitement in Wawa.
In the latter half of the 1950s, the town's name was changed to Jamestown, in honour of Sir James Hamet Dunn, Bt, but was changed back to Wawa by the request of the community's residents.
Wawa is also home to NHL hockey players Chris Simon and Denny Lambert.
Wawa is also known for its snowmobiling and fishing. It depends on tourism coming from the Trans-Canada Highway.
Wawa is the turn-around point for many truckers going through Ontario. As a result it is known as one of the hardest places to hitch-hike out of in central Canada. "Don't take rides to Wawa" is actually a saying amongst hitch-hikers and those who regularly give them rides.
Most of the movie Snow Cake takes place (and is filmed) in Wawa.

Contents

Weather Forecasts and Information

External links

Weather Forecasts and Information

Forecasting

★ WawaWeather.com
Online Weather Station

★ Maximillan's Weather Station

External links

★ Wawa Tourism website

★ Wawa's Economic Development Corporation

★ Wawa's own news site - with daily updates

★ Multi-Community GIS Solution includes web-based GIS for Wawa

★ Wawa's I-deal Realty is now online!