Onaping Falls in Northern Ontario

The High Falls of Onaping

By Bala Menon

Onaping Falls in Northern Ontario was until 1977 outside the ambit of municipal administration and was a company town, owned and operated by mining giant Inco. 

Today, it is an amalgamation of three local communities - Dowling, Onaping and Levack. Dowling is about 11 km from Onaping along Highway 144, while Levack is north of the highway along Municipal Road 8. The smaller subdivisions of Levack Station and Phelans are also located along Highway 144 between Dowling and Onaping.

Clear Lake at the entrance to Onaping Valley. At one time, it was 
a water source for Onaping. Now it is used for swimming and recreational boating.

On January 1, 2001, the town and the Regional Municipality were dissolved and amalgamated into the city of Greater Sudbury.

The Onaping Falls area is known for its scenic beauty and its abundance of recreational faciilities; fishing, hunting, snowmobiling, cross-country and downhill skiing.

Onaping is particularly known for its High Falls, where the Onaping River drops 46 metres in a single plunge, sending mist and froth for several meters. The town is at the point where the Canadian Shield meets the Sudbury Nickel Irruptive, caused by a meteorite strike two billion years ago. There is a magnificent lookout off Highway 144 called the A. Y. Jackson Lookout, for the famous Group of Seven artist who immortalized the view on his canvas with his 1953 painting "Spring on the Onaping River". There is a local government information centre near the lookout.

A wonderful trail can take you quite close and over the Onaping Falls. 

Onaping Falls from the A.Y. Jackson Lookout

The scenery is majestic and the area contains a treasure of natural resources for the traveler and outdoor sports enthusiast. The city itself is very small - home to only about 4,000 people and is part of the City of Greater Sudbury. 

There are fine recreational facilities available - a double rink, a curling club, downhill skiing and cross-country skiing. Ski trails are located off Highway 144 near the Windy Lake Motel. For updates on ski conditions call 855-0145

Currently, there is a proposal to build a zip line to carry tourists down and across High Falls on steel cables stretched from a tower near the present foot bridge to a landing midway where they can walk across a rope bridge. Here, visitors can walk up the path or if stage one is a success and the second part of the zip line is constructed they can take their chances on the big run down the main falls to a landing near A.Y. Jackson Center. A 3 rope walkway would be stretched across the river in the middle of the rapids area above the main falls. 

The Annual Cardboard Toboggan race in the area in Feburary is an attraction at the former mer Levack Ski hill . Hot chocolate, a bon fire, great music, and tons of snowy fun are all part of the exciting event. More info at: Onaping Community Site

The Onaping Falls Curling Club is located at 10 Fraser St.Onaping, Ont. The 
club has 150 members. The club can be reached at.966-2323 

© Bala Menon. Pics on this page © Bala Menon 

Ontario's northern gateway

Capreol - the Northern Gateway To Leisure

By Bala Menon

Capreol is a small town in Northern Ontario - located in a valley along the Vermillion River and surrounded by the magnificent Laurentian Highlands. The town is worth a day trip - if you get to Sudbury. It is just a little over 40 km north - and the town is known as the doorway to thousands of acres of quality hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, and canoeing. 

The scenery is magnificent and the area contains a treasure of natural resources for the traveler and outdoor sports enthusiast. The city itself is very small - home to only about 4,000 people and is part of the City of Greater Sudbury. 

There are fine recreational facilities available - a double rink, a curling club, downhill skiing and cross-country skiing. The most famous attraction is, of course, the Northern Ontario Railway Museum and Heritage Centre at Prescott Park. 

The museum's mandate is to provide a unique and educational tourist attraction that preserves and displays the railroading past and heritage of Northern Ontario. A locomotive simulator will let you explore life on the railroad through the 'box car house' and 'school wheels'. The Museum is housed in a Victorian-styled building, dating back to 1916 and is one of the oldest standing homes in the community.

Capreol is also considered a great place to to relocate to if you are considering a move to the wonderful North! 

The museum website says: 'The museum is open from the Victoria Day weekend until Labour Day weekend and hosts a number of guides and self-guided tours and special events as well as educational tours for school groups. The museum's main operations are at 26 Bloor Street and the Heritage Centre is at 59 Yonge Street in the Greater Sudbury Community of Capreol.'

 

Capreol formed around the Capreol railway station which was a major divisional point on the Canadian National Railway line, and was named for Frederick Chase Capreol, the original promoter of the Northern Railway of Canada. (This was first named as Toronto, Simcoe and Lake Huron Railroad and then renamed as the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Union Railroad). Frederick Capreol was born in England and came to Canada in the early 19th century, to join the fur industry, but later became a successful auction house owner and visionary entrepreneur.

Many of the museum exhibits celebrates the contribution of Frederick Capreol and other prominent personalities of the area such as William A. Ramsey and Harold Prescott. 

© Bala Menon

All pics of the ‘Trains to Nowhere at the Capreol Rail Museum’. © Bala Menon

Dr Norman Bethune - A Canadian Hero

 

The Scalpel, the Sword - the story of Dr. Norman Bethune

a book written by Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon

By Bala Menon 

"That morning, as the men were trooping out of the village for the day's labor in the fields, they saw Tung standing in the doorway of Yu's house. They stopped at the courtyard wall and inquired after Pai Chu En."

"He is dead", Tung said. The day - November 13, 1939, twenty minutes after 5.00am. That was when Dr. Norman Bethune died, as the great revolution raged in the Chinese countryside. Medically his death was certified "death by gangrene". But as Madame Sun Yat Sen said "he fell in the fight against fascism and reaction."

A Canadian Hero 

Portrait of Norman Bethune
taken in Madrid, Spain, 1937
 (courtesy Library and Archives
Canada/PA-114788)

Bethune is no stranger to millions throughout the world who fight for the same ideal for which the doctor sacrificed his life. Bethune became a hero because he could vanquish his weaknesses. "He turned his back on his life as a sybarite, a roisterer, a darling of women and became the front-line doctor, the guerilla, the revolutionary". Today, wherever the cause of the world's peoples has triumphed, he is honoured. Wherever it is still has to be won, he is a banner, a call to arms.

In this book, remarkable for its lyrical style, the authors recreate the throb of all the now historic battles fought in Spain and China - battles, which Bethune fought. The book vividly describes the emotions of a man who though struck down by tuberculosis became one of the most prominent thoracic surgeons in North America. He invented several pieces of surgical equipment that formed the basis of the advanced equipment we see today.

He was, however, stricken with guilt when he saw both state and society train guns on ordinary people. During the Great Depression, he urged the Canadian government to provide free health services to the people. His request was rejected. He traveled to the Soviet Union in 1935, and later organized the Montreal Group for the Security of the People's Health, the first body in Canada to campaign for universal and free medical care. The same year he joined the Communist Party.

The Bethune Museum in Gravenhurst in picturesque Muskoka.

Born in Gravenhurst in Northern Ontario, Bethune also served in the First World War as a stretcher-bearer and saw at first hand the horrors of war. He went to Spain and worked out of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War and developed a system of battlefield blood transfusions which saved many lives.

It was during the Spanish war, when Bethune embarked on a lecture tour of Northern America, after returning from the Malaga battlefield, that he came out with an announcement he was a communist in response to a heckler's question.

The Bethune Memorial House, Gravenhurst.
Pic: Claudette Bue/licensed under the 
Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 1.0 Generic license/Wikimedia

Bethune knew that for a man of his social position and whose forefathers for generation have been preachers he could be stigmatized. Perhaps he knew that he had already left his social status behind when he went to tend the "shattered Spanish Mountain tops" declassified, with a high awareness of human problems and passionate concern about human suffering.

Poet, Inventor, Artist

Later in China, he marched with the Chinese Red Army against the Japanese forces, and developed his blood transfusion system further. He invented a mobile unit that helped save at least 500 lives a day and continued doing operations under terrible conditions.

He remained a poet and an artist. Bethune had written in his diary about the true artist - "he makes uneasy the static, the set and the still. In a world afraid of change, he preaches revolution, the principle of life. He is an agitator, a disturber of the peace, quick, impatient, positive, restless and disquieting. He is the creative spirit working in the soul of man..."

After Bethune's death, Mao Tse Tung, who led the Chinese revolution, told his countrymen: "We mourn much more than the passing of a man". And at Yenan the troops of the 8th Red Army stood row upon row, filling the valley between the honeycombed hills while Martial Chu Teh the commander - in -chief of the communist armies spoke to them of the man who died for them.

Mausoleum of Martyrs

It was, however, nine years later that General Neieh entered the Shansi Province where Bethune died to wipe out the desecration done by the Japanese on his grave. Bethune's comrades had by then become the rulers of China. His remains were taken to the Mausoleum of Martyrs in the city of Shih Cha Chuang, south east of Peking. A statue, a pavilion and a museum mark the site. Even today one of most widely read articles in China is Mao Tsetung's In Memory of Dr. Norman Bethune.

Just next to Bethune's grave is the grave of his colleague an Indian doctor Dr. Dwaraknath Kotnis who also died in the attempt to penetrate Chincha-Chi in the hope of taking over Bethune's work. (Dwarkanath Shantaram Kotnis (born October 10, 1910 in Solapur District, Southern Maharashtra, India – died December 9, 1942, in China), was one of five Indian physicians dispatched to China to provide medical assistance during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1938. Along with Dr. Bethune, he continues to be revered by the Chinese people. In April 2005 both their graves were covered under a mountain of flowers by the Chinese people during the Qingming Festival, a day used by the Chinese to commemorate their ancestors.)

And as the epilogue of the book says "in the memory of Bethune's life, the great are reminded of the people from whom they draw their strength, and the people are reminded of the road that anyone can travel to greatness."

In 1973, the Canadian Government took over his home in Gravenhurst and converted it into a well-visited museum. A commemorative stamp series has also been issued. Norman Bethune's spirit was at last back home - with many of his welfare ideals now in place in a modern, caring and compassionate Canada.

© 2025, Bala Menon

This article was first published in the training newspaper 'Charisma' of the 
Times of India Group in Bombay (now known as Mumbai), India.