Items about Atikokan in Historic Newspapers, 1951 - 1970.

The Canadian customs official in London, Ontario, looked at the destination on my declaration and blinked. "Where on earth is Atikokan?" he asked.

But my seat mate on the Canadian National plane headed for Port Arthur brightened when he heard the old Indian name meaning "Caribou bones."

"I'm the chief of police at Fort William," he explained. "One of my best friends, Syd Hancock was one of the pioneers up there at Steep Rock mines. I take it you are going to the mines, of course".

Today, the names of Atikokan, Ontario, and Steep Rock are synonymous to any north country resident.

Atikokan is the thriving new settlement of 4,000 mining families — persons who have flocked from all corners of Canada and from the United States during the past decade to work in one of Canada's great iron ore processing centers, the Steep Rock Mines.

Once a Rail Crossing

Ten years ago, Atikokan was just a railroad crossroads with 100(?) inhabitants living mostly in box cars.

Ten years ago, Steep Rock Mines were not mines at all. They were just a peaceful lake, surrounded by moose pasture.

Today men are fishing a fortune in ore out of the old lake bed and prospects point to much larger "catches" ahead.

The pay off is not just in dollars but in added security for a continent that has rapidly run worldwide wars and unprecedented peace demands.

Steep Rock was my destination this day as an Akron reporter because an Akron district resident had the courage — when no one else could be found — to give (his?) backing to the venture in 1942.

He is Cyrus Eaton, Canadian-born financier who lives on a big farm in Northfield, Ohio, when he is not spending his summers in Nova Scotia at his second home.

But while at Atikokan I also met the other "hero" of Steep Rock, Julian Cross, the man who made the discovery that there was iron ore beneath that huge lake, after everyone else had given up the search.

Retired Prospector

A retired Canadian prospector, Mr. Cross now lives in Port Arthur, the town 140 miles to the south on Lake Superior to which the precious carloads of Steep Rock iron ore are shipped.

Mr. Cross related the story of the amazing discovery in his own words as we rode the engine of an ore train going out onto the [..] and watched the precious [..] gold ore as it was dumped into the holds of the ore boats going down to the steel mill ports of the United States.

"The Steep Rock Iron strike is becoming the biggest thing we've ever had up here," this salty, rugged character told me. "It even turned out to be the biggest iron ore producing center since Minnesota's mighty Mesabi was opened a half century ago.

"But Steep Rock was a lot tougher than Mesabi which had ore close to the earth's surface and was easily reached," he added.

"Up here, we had to reach our ore from narrow veins deep in the ground and could do it only after rivers and lakes had been moved and entire drainage areas altered."

Story Traced

Mr. Cross then traced the story of Steep Rock back to the great glaciers, which, when they moved out centuries ago left Steep Rock Lake, an N-shaped hole, 250 feet deep, 15 miles long, containing an estimated 1,200,000 gallons of water.

As far back as a hundred years ago, he said, floating ore was turning up along its shores. Indian canoes came off the lake with red streaks along their water lines. More than one old prospector looked, staked a claim and started ripping up the shore in vain. All went broke and gave up.

By 1900, geologists began to theorize there were ore deposits beneath the lake. But to get to these deposits was something else again. To drain the lake would risk having 30 square miles of water rush down on the scene in a body.

And there was still no real proof the ore was there.

"That's where I came in," relates Mr. Cross with a twinkle. "I'd been prospecting in the bush for 30 years with no success until I hit a nickel claim one day that was worth $250,000.

Picked Coldest Month

"That gave me the boost to try Steep Rock. I picked the coldest month of the year — January, 1938. The 60-degree-below temperature worked to advantage. Only then could the lake ice be strong enough to support my drilling rigs, which can't be operated at all from boats.

"For weeks I worked, sending big bits down through the ice and in under the lake from the side. One day I hit something. At first I thought it was just a lump of dirt.

"I kicked it and knew it was iron ore. I knew I must have found a major deposit. I staked my claim to 5,000 acres of public land, organized a company and set out to find a man to finance it.

"That man was Eaton. He had the courage to try it."

Bonds were sold. The United States and Canadian Government approved stock issues. The Recon­struction Finance Corporation put in some money. By the year's end, Steep Rock Iron Mines Ltd., was in business for keeps.

Real Work Began

The real work began — the work that I saw still continuing in my trips down into the immense mines where power shovels dig ore night and day.

Workers had to divert an entire river — the Seine. Draining of the lake by special pumps, followed. Steam shovels and powerful 22-ton trucks were still at work clearing lake-bottom sediment when I went town into the pits.

There were plenty of setbacks too. Once in 1944, when some 10,000 tons of ore had been moved, the pit caved in, burying equipment and newly excavated mine deposits. But a year later 500,000 tons of ore was moving down the Canadian National tracks and the railroad was building more ore cars.

Tonnage passed 1,300,000 in 1951, and this year a 1,500,000-ton movement is forecast. In five years the figures should reach nearly 5,000,000, it is estimated.

Underground, as well as open-pit mining has now been started there.

On-the-Spot Story

It is at Atikokan you get the real behind-the-scenes story.

You can reach the settlement only on the one train a day from Port Arthur. There are no roads in there.

This will all be changed by fall, however. Miners are looking forward eagerly to the opening of the first road to the mining center. Mine officials will greet the opening with mixed emotions. Tourists and visitors will bring hundreds of new problems to the Steep Rock bosses.

It was a typical Atikokan Saturday night when I arrived. But the town was not a typical gold-rush town of the "Roaring Forties" such as I had half expected.

Miners and miners' children were eagerly watching the one train a day pull in. They saw their precious milk unloaded — which costs 21 cents a quart — and their daily mail.

Orderly Citizens

A few miners carrying fishing equipment were boarding the train with their families, going to spend a long week end at the "Lakehead." There was plenty of gaiety, but no shouting, or fighting, or disorder such as you sometimes see in mining movies.

Instead, just across the street and around the town were the lights of their comfortable modern little homes, on streets laid out where once the bush had crept right to the station platform. Spires of at least three churches pricked the shadows.

From the nearby recreation hall (called the "Rec") there came the thrum of an orchestra. The schottiche and polka were vying with square dances at a Saturday night "do."

Miners Help Each Other

I learned that some 185 of the three or four room-with-bath miner's homes, had been erected here by the Steep Rock Company. At the east end of the town some 400 new dwellings are now going up on a fine modern development that will even have a garden shopping center. These homes will all be sold to the miners. They do not want this to be a company owned town.

The miners help each other build their houses on the 50-by-130 lots. There is no profiteering allowed and very few contractors are necessary.

Atikokan is not actually a town yet, but it is well on its way to becoming one. At present, it is ruled by a "clerk" and the provincial government sends in policemen and an occasional Mountie to keep the peace. A small town library is open three days a week.

The phone exchange is four or five times bigger than the company expected when it went in there.

Tiny gardens are springing up despite the short summer seasons.

Mrs. Neal Edmonstone, wife of the secretary-treasurer of the company, found one year that deer had chewed off the tops of her carrots and that rabbits and bears were frequent visitors in her garden, located on the outskirts of the settlement.

Frost came early that year and finished it.

"I called it my lost garden," she explained blithely.

From the wives of the mining executives down, you'll find the Steep Rock women a cheerful, happy lot.

Old Story to Many

Many have been miner's wives and engineers wives for years, of course. They have known gold mines, and nickel mines before they came here.

The miners themselves are big, brawny, sun-tanned men, men with names like Kollsnyk and Kostashuk and Krukoski.

A Ferriggi works beside a Bergman.

Most are second-generation immigrants. Some have worked for years on western farms before coming here.

In their comfortable homes atop the hill overlooking the mines — homes they soon must leave to make way for further blasting and a railroad — I talked to executives' wives who have lived here since the mine was opened. They have their parties and dinners, just as if they weren't miles out in the bush.

Mrs. Edmonstone's beaver dinners are famous triumphs of culinary skill, served with rice and chutney, bananas and pineapple.

"But it isn't pioneering and frontiering now like it was when we came here 15 years ago and set up housekeeping in a one-room bunkie," said the wife of the man who is president of the company.

"Bears don't eat out of your garbage cans any more, and wolves don't meet you on the paths. But you can still hear wolves howling on the outskirts of town at night, and we found a bear family down here on the lake shore the other day.

"I was a University of Toronto graduate who had never had my feet off the pavement when I came up," the attractive company president's wife explained. "It was my first wedding anniversary when I came here. I began cooking on a two-burner oil stove. Indians used to paddle round and watch our bonfire on the lovely shore of the lake that is now a mine.

"We've had to move three times since, because the blasting started and the construction pushed us out.

One time we loaded our one-room shack onto a trailer and just hauled it through the woods to a new site.

"Sometimes I look at what is left of the lake now — just a deep hole — and I say, 'Look what they've done to my lake,' Then I think, 'But this is progress.'"

"One thing is sure, even though we've got to move again, I'll never go back to the city. My children, Bill, 10, and Polly 6(?), love it here." — From The Christian Science Monitor.

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Note: the "company president's wife", quoted in the last few paragraphs is obviously Betty Fotheringham.

By Dave Stockand
Canadian Press Staff Writer

ATIKOKAN, Ont. (CP) — When the iron-mining township of Atikokan looks into the future, which is often, it sees itself as a city.

In the 10 years since the iron slapped this northwestern Ontario community from its slumber as a railway hamlet the population has spiralled from 300 to more than 4,500, and Atikokan says this is just a start.

Streets are unpaved and all the plumbing hasn't been brought indoors yet; but the iron ore they're digging from the bottom of Steep Rock lake, four miles away, means an annual payroll of $4,­500,­000.

At least that is what the earnings in wages total under present production, with 1,250,000 tons of ore shipped this season by Steep Rock Iron Mines Ltd.

Big Work Force

Mining that much iron ore took more than 1,000 workers. Under plans mapped by Steep Rock and Caland Ore Co. Ltd., Canadian subsidiary of Inland Steel of Chi­cago, the need for men will shoot upward.

By 1958 Steep Rock plans to boost its annual haul to 5,500,000 tons, and says the need will be for 2,500 workers. The Caland mine, expected to take out its first ore in 1960, will produce 3,000,000 tons a year when fully developed.

Atikokan's business picture for the last year is described by Neil Edmonstone, Steep Rock secretary treasurer, as fairly static.

"But," he says, "with the Inland arrival I think there will be another upsurge in the mercantile development of the town."

Figures aside, say the people of Atikokan, it's a good place to live.

As for the needs of Atikokan — pavement is just one of many — they multiply as the population increases. And townsfolk boast that Atikokan had Canada's highest birth rate last year and talk of a population of 16,000 in the early 1960's.

Atikokan is turning miners into merchants. Gordon Edwards, a Steep Rock man and president of the Atikokan Chamber of Commerce, says "it wouldn't be exaggerating" to put at approximately 15 the number of men who have gone into business for themselves after starting out at the mine.

He tells of one man who came here with a packsack of costume jewelry. Not long after that he threw up a shack, first business establishment, and today owns a prosperous hardware store.

Of Atikokan Mr. Edwards says: "Sure, it's a shoddy looking place, but it won't be a few years from now. There isn't a thing you've got in the city that we aren't going to need here."

Divisional Point

There are tarpaper-covered shanties in Atikokan. There are also modern bungalows. Built by Steep Rock in conjunction with Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, they rent to mine workers at a top of $62.50 a month. A new sub-division carries the posh name of "Dunbar Heights."

Atikokan got its first boost when it became a Canadian Northern Railway terminal point away back in 1900. It became a township after nine years under the wing of the Ontario government as an improvement district.

While so classed the community was governed by a board of trustees appointed by the lieutenant-governor-in-council.

Nov. 30, however, self government begins with the township's first election day. A reeve and four councilors will be chosen.

Just about that time citizens will mark the official opening of the first road link with Fort William and Port Arthur. Next, Atikokan will press for a road westward to the pulp and paper town of Fort Frances.

Atikokan is becoming a township instead of a town for financial reasons: If it becomes a town, the mine would be outside the taxation district and Atikokan wouldn't be eligible for a share of the mining tax collected by the Ontario government.

(Editor's Note: Atikokan, a growing community built on the iron-ore riches of Steep Rock Lake in northwestern Ontario, is one of Canada's boom towns. In this story, Charles Mercer of the Associated Press, writes of this segment of Canada's development from the standpoint of a United States reporter).

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By Charles Mercer

ATIKOKAN, Ont. (AP) — Big money. Whisky a buck a shot. Roulette. Expensive dolls. Fights in the muddy streets.

Such are the hammock dreams of Americans when they think of that well-publicized phrase "Canada, the new and the last frontier."

If the dreamers will awaken we'll set some facts straight about one mining boom town deep in the Canadian bush.

The money, in general, isn't "big." There's no whisky. If any gambling exists it certainly isn't visible. Nearly all the women are married and busy raising families. And when two trucks driven by husky young men reach Atikokan's main intersection at the same time, I saw each driver politely wave on the other.

These people, most of them from the cities and towns and farms of Canada, want schools, roads, medical care, laughter, a few luxuries — as well as work and money. And they're getting them — the hard way. The vast majority didn't come here to get rich quick and pull out. They came to stay.

The desire to stay and make it permanent is the story of today's Canadian frontier.

A dozen years ago Atikokan was a whistle-stop of 300 bush-dwellers on a Canadian National Railways side line 140 miles northwest of Port Arthur.

Today about 5,500 persons are bustling along its unpaved streets. The bush still surrounds Atikokan. But the outside world has come in, bringing the optimistic conviction that Atikokan will be a city of 25,000 to 30,000 by 1960.

This all came about because a Port Arthur geologist named Julian Cross discovered in 1933 vast iron-ore deposits under Steep Rock Lake, four miles north of town.

Thus Atikokan symbolizes the story of how venturing capital, sparked by engineering ingenuity, is carving rich mining empires from Canada's vast northern wilderness.

A company, Steep Rock Iron Mines Ltd., was formed during the Second World War and in two years engineers changed the course of the Seine River, which fed Steep Rock Lake. They pumped billions of cubic feet of silt and water from the lake until much of its primeval clay base was exposed. The first mining began in 1945.

Today Steep Rock Lake looks like a weird crater of the moon, a plunging pit of rust-colored rock pocked by men and machines. The company is engaged in both open-pit and underground mining. The railroad carries the ore down to Port Arthur on Lake Superior for shipment by ore boat to the head of the industrial U.S.

Now a second company has leased mining rights at Steep Rock and begun a $50,­000,­000 operation. It is Caland Ore Co. Ltd., a Canadian subsidiary of Inland Steel Co. of Chicago.

Last year the Steep Rock Company produced 1,­300,­000 tons of iron ore. By 1958 it expects to be producing 5,­000,­000 tons annually. It anticipates a working force of more than 2,500 by that time with a payroll of more than $12,­000,­000. Caland probably will be employing about 1,000 then.

Canadian planners figure on a population 7-1/2 times the number of mine employees. Thus the dream that Atikokan may become a city of 25,000 to 30,000 by 1960.

Atikokan has the highest birth rate of any town in Canada — 42 per 1,000. That means medical care. The town now has two doctors and recently added a $130,000 wing to its small hospital. About half was government funds. The rest was paid by local subscription with the Steep Rock Company contributing $1.50 for every dollar raised locally.

Children also mean schools, which are multiplying as fast here as in any mush­rooming American suburb.

A teacher shortage?

A man grinned at that question. "We don't have one. We just pay 'em what they're worth — and they're worth a lot to us." One advertisement for teachers with the town placed in a Toronto newspaper brought 55 applications.

"What do we do here?" Another young man repeated the question. He was an accountant who'd left the comforts of eastern Ontario with his wife to take an office job with one of the mining companies. "There isn't enough time to get done all the things we have to do."

See, the things you always took for granted you suddenly find you have to start from scratch up here. Schools, roads, a hospital, a library. Besides, you find you have to do so much about your house here, things you used to hire done back in the city.

No one knows this better than Robert W. Clarke, a man who confesses that a congenital inability to drive a nail straight did not prevent him from building his own house.

A city boy, raised in Montreal, Clarke was for 15 years a reporter and editor for The Canadian Press. One day four years ago he decided Atikokan would be a good place to realize an old ambition of running his own newspaper. So he borrowed a couple of thousand and found a partner.

Clarke had some tough sledding. There were days when he and his partner literally went hungry. His partner pulled out, but Clarke stayed put and kept the Atikokan Progress rolling.

Meanwhile he married and he and his wife realized the labor cost of having a house built for them was too high. So, after working 12 hours a day at the office, Bob Clake found himself at midnight driving nails — and driving them straight.

He and his new partner, Norman C. Dick, are planning a new and bigger office and plant. The Progress is a well-written, lively, professionally laid-out weekly newspaper.

What are his expectations? That the town will become a city and the Progress a daily. Meanwhile, there's no let-up in his labor.

The profits of people like Bob Clarke are not huge. There's no desire to clean up and get out. They're here to stay.

There have been a few big deals in real estate, of course. One man reputedly bought a couple of lots on Main street five years ago for $300 and recently sold them for $28,000. But he's still here and has no intention of leaving.

Bob Moffatt, 26, came here from Manitoba at the age of 13, worked five years for the mines and was taken ill. When he recovered he had $450 cash. He borrowed another $450, bought a car and started a taxi service. Then he bought another car. Next he bought a lot at the head of Main street for $2,200. There he opened a service station. To the service station he added an auto dealership. Next he became a dealer in bulk oil.

Not long ago somebody offered him $25,000 for his lot at the head of Main street — the direction the street has to move if it's going to grow at all.

"Naturally I didn't take it." says Moffatt. "I've got to live a lot longer than $25,000 will last me."

Both mining interests and the towns­people are unified in their determination that this shall not become a "company town" of identical houses ruled by benevolent despotism as has happened in the past in many a one-industry American community. But it is a "planned" town, one of the few such mining communities in Canada.

The Steep Rock Company has contributed heavily to the town, helping with virtually every one of the public services which make the difference between open country and a habitable community. Its most recent contribution is toward a $30,000 swimming pool and a directed recreation program for children.

About the only man in town who doesn't like fishing is Bob Clarke — an eccentricity his fellow townsmen forgive since he's so enthusiastic about so many other things. The town also vociferously supports not just one baseball team but an entire league. A new movie theatre will increase seating capacity from the present 500 to 750. There are now six churches. Atikokan has two hotels, one extremely modern with roll-away beds.

Both hotels are owned by John Reid, the Atikokan reeve who was elected last Jan. 1 when Atikokan officially became a township.

What does a woman miss here?

"Not much," said one who came from a large city. "The friendliness makes up for a lot of things. Just once in a while you wish the children would stop tracking mud into the house." She smiled reflectively. "And flowers don't grow very well here. Just once more I'd like to see lilacs come in bloom."

By Doris M. Fitzgerald

Most brides hope to start house­keeping with cupboards full of pretty clothes, linens, and china, and with new furniture, and the latest electrical gadgets, but, when Gwen Smith of Montreal, became engaged to Bill Neeland of Fort William she realized that she would have no immediate use for such amenities. Instead, her trousseau featured slacks and sweaters and long winter underwear. A good sleeping bag took precedence over a bed, and kitchen equipment included a coal oil lamp, a water pail, and an axe for chopping firewood. For William D. Neeland, who was born in Moose Jaw, grew up in Fort William, was educated at Ridley College, St. Catherines, and received his Master of Science degree from McGill University, is a geologist. His work of exploring and assaying the mineral ores deep below the surface of the earth, takes him to the remoter, unsettled parts of Canada, and when he has completed his findings in one area he moves on to another.

New Experience

Apart from summer cottages, and resort hotels, Gwen Neeland had had no experience of country living, but she cheerfully renounced accustomed luxuries and conveniences, for a rugged life of camping in the bush, in order to be with her husband.

She got used to walking, and snow­shoeing for great distances, and to traveling on trucks, trains, and railway jiggers, freighters, canoes, and bush planes, and she learned the hard way, many things that were not on the curriculum of Miss Stone's School for Girls (now Weston School) in Montreal.

Log Cabin First Home

A snowmobile took the Neelands to their first home at the Thompson Cadillac Mine in northern Quebec. It was a very old prospector's log cabin, but being in the Amos-Val d'Or gold mining area where there was considerable settlement, it boasted electric light, and water was delivered to the door twice a week.

First White Woman

Things were different at Steep Rock, where Gwen Neeland was the first white woman to touch foot. Her husband was sent to the site, 150 miles west of Fort William, by the late Joseph Errington, to locate iron ore. When satisfied that there was a large deposit there, he returned to Fort William to fetch Gwen who was staying with his parents.

It was the end of February, and the ice on Steep Rock Lake, which has since been drained, but was then the only level spot to land, was not thick enough to bear a plane, so the two of them trudged 7 miles through the snow from Atikoken. Mrs. Neeland packed 40 pounds of food on her back, and her husband carried a larger load. Their new home was a small tent with a wooden floor precariously balanced on a rock, which fell sharply away under one corner. In the mornings the canvas roof would be sagging over their heads from the weight of fresh snow, and one day they woke up looking like black face comedians, because, in the night the wick of the little coal oil heater had crept up and covered everything with greasy black soot. This was a sorry mess to clean up in zero weather when buckets of water had to be drawn through a hole in the ice, and heated on a two burner coal oil cook stove. It was difficult too, to wash heavy underwear in a hand basin, and to bake bread in a portable tin oven. But she got used to these chores just as she became accustomed to the winter stillness, and her black spaniel Bous as chief daytime companion.

Order Prefab

When freight could be brought in they ordered a prefab wooden "Bunkie" which came in easily bolted together sections. It had a front and back door and four windows, and seemed a palace after the tent. The coal oil heater was replaced by a wood stove, and Mrs. Neeland learned to cut down small trees for firewood, and always to keep a pail of water near the stove because green wood burns so fiercely.

"Was it warmer in the tent?" "Well, yes", she said "but our hair still frosted on the pillows, and every night and morning the canned goods on the shelf used to "pop" as they froze and unfroze."

As Low as 60 Below

Mrs. Neeland added that in the north country the temperature often falls to 60 below, and rises in the summer as high as 95 degrees, but neither of these extremes seem as trying as they would in southern Ontario, because the air is so dry.

90 Miles to Doctor

The nearest doctor lived ninety miles away, but there was a Red Cross nurse and a three bed Outpost Hospital at Atikoken. On one occasion when Mrs. Neeland was taken ill she was placed in a miners basket and transported by dump truck, boat and truck to Atikoken, where she remained until the tri-weekly train came through and she could be taken to the hospital in Port Arthur. Their fourteen year old daughter Carol was born while the Neelands lived at Steep Rock, but Mrs. Neeland went to Montreal for that event. The Neelands lived at Steep Rock for four interesting years during which the site developed into the largest iron producing mine in Canada.

Bill Neeland next spent a year with the Sudbury Diamond Drilling Co., and then enlisted in the R.C.N.V.R. in which he held the rank of Lieutenant. Mrs. Neeland and Carol returned to Montreal, and George was born there in 1945. At war's end the family moved to Fort William, but Mr. Neeland was away from home for months at a time. He spent a year traveling all over Canada, and the north west for the Kennicot Copper Co., then went out to Regina to help organize a Mines branch for the Department of Natural Resources of the Sask­atch­ewan Govern­ment.

Mrs. Neeland says that most people do not realize that northern Sask­atch­ewan is very similar to northern Ontario. It is full of rock and muskeg and hundreds of lakes which are being fished commercially. The fish are filleted by Indian help, frozen, and shipped to the United States. Fish and other freight are flown from the north by big Canso planes in summer, and in the winter "cat trains" which are glorified sleds used for transportation.

Move to Flin Flon

When Mr. Neeland became resident Geologist and Inspector of Mines at Flin Flon, his family joined him there. Part of Flin Flon is in Manitoba and part in Sask­atch­ewan, and housing accommodation was scarce in the town so they lived 16 miles out in a bush settlement of 10 houses at Denare Beach, Sask. (The word Denare is formed of the first two letters of Department of National Resources). Their neighbours were Ukranians, Icelanders, Poles and Crees. Duck hunting and whist were favorite pastimes, and in Flin Flon curling was such a popular sport that even 7th grade school children carried brooms around the street.

Teacher Loved Soap Operas

Carol attended the one room school at Denare where there were 22 pupils in several grades, and speaking several languages. Some of the lessons came by radio, and as the teacher had a weakness for soap operas the radio was kept on for those too. She did not make great progress so her parents sent her to Miss Edgar and Miss Cramp's School in Montreal for two years. When young George's education had to be considered, they decided it was time to establish a permanent home base. Two years ago the Neelands came east. Mr. Neeland set up his own practice as Consulting Geologist, and they bought a house in Thornhill.

Now Have Permanent Home

Though the family enjoy the comforts of a settled community, Gwen Neeland says that she will always be glad that she had those years of her life in the bush, where the air was clear and invigorating, and the scenery unspoiled. They came to look upon the animals and birds as friends and would have been loath to shoot a deer. In Sask­atch­ewan a silver fox used to come out of the woods and take crusts from their hands. They also enjoyed meeting, and knowing all kinds of people, many of whom had had no formal education but were full of wisdom and character. They were spared that dread of all northerners, a bad forest fire, and the only things which they were truly glad to leave behind were black flies, mosquitoes and out-door plumbing.

In case this article leads you to picture Mrs. Neeland as a muscular Amazonian type, we would like to add that she is a slight, and very pretty young woman, who looks as though she had never worn anything but high heeled shoes and smart clothes.