Northern Ontario Part 3: Timmins

Timmins is where my father was born and grew up and partly for that reason it holds interest for me. Until recently, there was still family up here.

Driving into town, Highway 101 makes a long detour over a new road, in order to accomodate surface pit gold mining. Timmins was founded thanks to the discovery of gold, and with still significant deposits around, remains a major part pf the economy.

When the sign says "don't feed the bears", man you've better not feed the bears!



Shumacher, just to the east of the main town of Timmins. Has a real frontier feel to it. My father said that nearly every place on the main street (since by-passed) was a tavern. Most closed or burned down (of those, many were arson).

















Downtown Timmins









Call centre. The building has the civic logo on it, so I wouldn't be surprised if it were subsidized by the city.



Trilingual sign on the police station.



























Around town:







Like most places, the city has turned to tourism. The gold mine tour is quite good. I cannot vouch for the Shania Twain museum (whose presence is groan-inducing, IMO)







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Upon leaving town on the west side, heading towards Highway 144 (one of the loneliest roads in Ontario), there's the mall, and then a new big-box retail has opened, including a new Wal-Mart (which replaced a location in the mall), and past that, Home Depot and a new Canadian Tire. No doubt, this has hurt downtown more than the slowly declining population, as even 10 years ago, was fairly healthy.







Leaving town on 144.

i wanna work at teletech now!

thx for the photo series sean!

Thanks for the photos of my hometown. I haven't been up there for four years, but I can see that the slow deterioration continues. Not that it was ever that great in the first place.

Thanks for the pics! Timmins has a definite frontier/resource town look to it, much more so than here in North Bay. I have cousins who live in Timmins so I've been there many times visiting. The downtown area is actually quite sizable given the city's population, however the buildings are rather nondescript.

Great photos Sean. Timmins looks like a miniature version of Sudbury (just with bigger trees). On your way up did you get a chance to stop at Onaping falls?

Thanks for the tour. Timmins is a place I've never been, and I may never get up there.

McIntyre Coffee Shop. Who needs Starbucks, indeed...

WTF?

London Cafe's been there forever. It was where my father got his first job doing deliveries. It's certainly a strange name for a Chinese restaurant, and was surprised that I still found it open and busy.

The cuisine is so inauthentic, it's more like you're eating "Chinese food" in London .

The tiny circular window just makes it more enigmatic.

Timmins,Ontario: interesting...

ST: Timmins as said has that northern frontier look to it. What was that third language listed on the TPD building? The ONR station is interesting and it looks like it serves both ONR Bus and Rail. It seems like in North America that you can't forget about Sprawl-Mart or other big box enterprises-or can't get away from them either.
Sean: On question-Are you of predominately Irish descent as I am and are there ethnic areas in small cities and towns in Ontario outside the obvious ones? - I'm just curious since I have never been up that far north in Ontario. Is Timmins predominately Native American in nature?
LI MIKE

Timmins is largely a white city, lots of French Canadians, Italians and people from various other European backgrounds. There is a sizable and growing Native population though, I'm guessing that the third language was probably Cree?