There really is a Memory Lane....

Mine is where most are, between our ears someplace in the old memory banks that were loaded long ago. And when I started researching for this, I made an interesting discovery: Google can find things better in the University of Toronto Library's Maps Section than the University of Toronto itself can, which says it all about 'higher education' wouldn't you say?

But I digress - please forgive me. On the 23rd on August, 1950, I was a high school dropout who ran away from home to start training as an Operator-In-Training with the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, which was the original name of Ontario Hydro, later again known as Hydro One. It was a very different company back in those days, and a lot more friendly than it is now, I'm quite sure. The official 1950 Road Map of Ontario didn't even show the road from Cobalt, the old silver mining center, running south-southeast from there along the Montreal River to four small power developments on it. I worked at two of those, shown in the Google Earth photo. A lot has changed since 1950, especially me!

Back in those days, large portions of the main highways in northern Ontario were still unpaved, and some weren't even built yet, like the portion of Highway 69 between Burwash and Britt on the eastern shores of Georgian Bay, which now is a major highway from southern Ontario to the Sudbury area. The portion of Highway 17 from a different Montreal River flowing into Lake Superior north of Sault Ste. Marie, going north from there to Wawa ( what a charming name!) and onward to the lakehead, then known as Fort William and Port Arthur, hadn't yet been built either. That makes me older than parts of the Trans-Canada Highway, and I'm beginning to feel like roadkill.....