Kenora

All Neil Young's changes weren't there after all

I was going to start this post with the interesting fact that the line in Neil Young’s song Helpless—“there is a town in north Ontario”—referred to Kenora. Young lived in Winnipeg for a while, when his father, Scott, was a sports writer at the Winnipeg Free Press. Scott Young was a colleague of my aunt Madeleine’s, deputy editor of the “Women’s Page” and one of just two women journalists at the paper at the time.

Kenora is at the top of Lake of the Woods, which is cottage country for many Winnipeggers. And logically, that is where all of Neil Young’s changes would have taken place. I have always believed that it was.

However, the internet now tells me that Young has said the town in question is in fact Omemee, which I regret to inform you, is in southern Ontario. I have never been to Omemee, so I can’t take this any further.

Anyway, here is a picture of a little island in Kenora’s harbour from the balcony of my friend, Graham.

An island in Kenora harbour at dawn, as seen from my friend Graham’s condo.

I hadn’t been to Kenora in several decades, and expected it to be more changed than it is. It is a logistical hub for the cottage country that surrounds it, populated mostly by well-off Winnipeggers. But the town seems at least superficially typical of many northern Ontario towns, with a mainly white, modestly prosperous middle-class and a significant and largely poor Indigenous population that live uneasily side-by-side.

This links in an odd way to the comments a number of you made on a previous post in which I had a photo of the Wawa Goose. Many of you asked that I also provide a picture of Husky the Muskie when I was in Kenora. Let me say that I hear you. I share your enthusiasm for large fibreglass objects and always intended to post a photo.

Husky the Muskie

Interestingly, my friend Graham told me a little story that says something about the town. The Husky the Muskie that I recalled was in a drab colour scheme similar to the actual fish.

The large replica fish formerly known as Husky the Muskie

An actual Muskie

When it came time to update Husky a few years ago—a day that awaits all such large objects, I suppose—it was decided to add an Indigenous design. Naturally, many (white) people objected to the new colour scheme because realistic, if oversized, portrayal of fish is an important element of our culture.

…

Anyway, for those of you who come only for the gory details of my EV journey, my trip from Thunder Bay to Kenora was relatively uneventful. One of the chargers I was planning to use, a Petro-Canada installation in Ignace, was bust. The nice young lady at the gas station said she really didn’t know much about it but that some service people had come and gone a few days earlier and they said there was a problem nationwide (gulp!).

However, I was able to make the rest of the trip to Kenora successfully by driving a little below the speed limit to preserve my battery’s range.

I then left Kenora for Winnipeg a day earlier than planned because a big Colorado Low was blowing in, and I made it to the big city a few hours before the snow began to fly. I’m here for a few days.