Michipicoten Harbour

History

The fun started in 1900 when Francis Hector Clergue established the Helen Iron Mine 16 kilometres east of the harbour. He also established a rail link, incorporated under the name Algoma Central and Hudson Bay Railway. Government subsidies arrived in the amount $6400 per mile of track, laid alongside a two million acre land grant. Work commenced on the line in 1899. They completed the first link of the Algoma Central Railway (ACR) which became operational the very next year.

At the harbour itself, they constructed massive ore docks along with coal docks and timber harnesses. The approach loading bridge spanned 229 metres (750 feet) in length. The wooden ore docks were 84 metres long and its long pier had dimensions of 183 metres by 18 metres. They shipped out the first Canadian iron to the American markets on July 1900. A blast furnace in Midland had become the first to fully process the Canadian iron ore on Canadian soil. The Canadian steel industry was born.

Two years later, they shipped most of the ore to Sault Ste. Marie where smelting and manufacturing facilities were close to completion. Hematite iron deposits began waning from 1917-21. Consequently they began shipping coal to the harbour to supply fuel for railway coal stops. Michipicoten Harbour supplied not only the entire ACR line but also many segments of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and the Canadian National Railway (CN). situated between Sudbury and Thunder Bay. They gathered timber for sawing and pulpwood at the harbour which they later boomed out by ship or tugs. The Newaygo Timber Company used these facilities for many years after the harbour’s demise.

The townsite at first consisted of a sawmill, company offices, a store with a post office, warehouses, a large three – storey hotel, and several houses for harbour employees as well as a bunkhouse. Hector Clergue also had a summer cottage on a nearby island, now known as Clergue Island. It was complete with a footbridge on the mainline and guarded by two chained black bears,

By the 1930’s the village contained approximately 25 houses, Dave Summers’ store and post office, that operated from 1899-1952, and a one room school. In 1936 they upgraded the local water infrastructure to provide piped water and fire hydrants to local residents.

Ore shipping began once again in 1937 at the Helen Mine. They constructed and completed new ore docks the following year. But this proved to be very short lived, since by 1945 they were shipping most ore by rail. Five years later the bins sat empty for good. Dieselization (the conversion from steam to diesel) had killed the coal industry. The ACR had fully converted to diesel by the early 1950’s, almost a full decade earlier than the CPR or CN. Coal shipments then ceased, thus sealing Michipicoten Harbour’s fate.

There is renewed activity at the Harbour once again now that Superior Aggregates are building a trap rock mine just behind the hills of the wharf. The mine actually cleaned up the environmental mess left by Algoma Ore, and the ACR. Residents use two of the four remaining structures. They use a third building as a bunkhouse for the new mine and a fourth, now owned by the mine, currently functions as a pottery shop called “Harbour Pottery.”