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Near north Flin Flon is far out
Road Trippin’ – Flin Flon, Manitoba (Video below)
I’ve never ordered pizza from Saskatchewan while in Manitoba before.
Flin Flon is funky that way – nestled up against the border with Manitoba’s prairie neighbour as it is.
Flin Flon is named after the fictional hero of J.E.P. Muddock’s The Sunless City, published in 1905. In the story, Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin sets out in a homemade submarine to explore a bottomless lake and ends up journeying to the centre of the earth. On his way down, he describes a lake lined with gold and silver.
Legend has it that a copy of the paperback was found in the forest in 1914 by explorer and prospector Thomas Creighton, who came to Flin Flon looking for gold like many others before and after him, inspiring him to call
Creighton’s name for the settlement stuck, and the Saskatchewan portion of the city bears his name.
In 1962, an eight-metre-high statue of the town’s namesake, designed by cartoonist Al Capp of Lil Abner fame, has greeted visitors to Flin Flon.
The town was founded in 1927 by Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting (now Hudbay Minerals), which mined significant amounts of zinc and copper.
Located at 54.77 degrees latitude, the community was established around Ross Lake and other small lakes in 1928, the year a railroad line was finished from The Pas (156 km south).
Several more mines were added over the years adding to the city’s industrial base but its population has been declining since the 1960s.
Incorporated on January 1, 1933, Flin Flon reached city status in 1970.
The city received expected news last June when Hudbay Minerals announced the end to mining activities at the company’s 777 mine after 18 years of production. It was the last mine in Flin Flon. About 800 jobs are expected to be lost, or moved two hours east to Snow Lake, which for a city of about 5,185 (Flin Flon, Mb. and Creighton, Sk.) is a hard blow.
With mining currently on the outs, the town is going to have to lean heavily into tourism.
Luckily, it’s located smack dab in the middle of some of the finest fishing lakes in the world.
Ringed with lakes, the city is northwest of Athapapuskow Lake and northeast of Amisk Lake, two large and gorgeous bodies of water.
Another unique and picturesque aspect of the home of the legendary Flin Flon Bombers hockey team is the fact it is built entirely on rock.
Want a basement? Forget about it.
Flin Flon is built atop the Canadian Shield, specifically the Precambrian Shield, formed almost two billion years ago by a series of underwater volcanoes.
City roads feature some sharp rises, drops, corners and parking lots, such as the one at the Victorian Hotel where we stayed, some interesting humps and dips.
The city’s above-ground wooden sewer boxes remain unique, also originally serving as its first sidewalks.
Flin Flon also holds a distinction for construction. The Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting Company’s smokestack (the Stack) dominates the skyline at 251 metres, making it the tallest free-standing structure in Western Canada.
Finally, another fascinating aspect of Flin Flon is that I was made there.
Born in a hospital at Whitney Street and Centre Street, that is now a church parking lot, I was whisked away for adoption in Winnipeg when only a month or two old.
I’d never been back to Flin Flon until September 2021.
Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, our annual travels, like most everyone else, were limited.
Finally able to visit my mother, living in a care home and trapped inside a mind and body absolutely ravaged by dementia, we made the trip east to Winnipeg.
We spent some time with my mother in a shaded garden at her care home. She asked repeatedly for her father, killed in 1943 along with the rest of her family when an Allied bomber clipped the spire of the tallest church in her town and crashed into her house, also killing people in neighbouring homes.
She was also a titan of a woman who kicked male doors down as a doctor in the 1950s.
When we left mom sitting in her wheelchair in the garden, I looked back through eyes blotted with tears and knew it would be the last time I’d ever see her. She died May 15 this year.
Thus it was a heavy-hearted and reflective 762-km journey north to Flin Flon from Winnipeg. The drive takes 7.5 to 8.5 hours depending on the route you take.
After arriving in Flin Flon, it dawned on me that after the last time I would see my mother alive, I would set foot in the town I was born in and adopted from.
And when we left a couple of days later, heading west on Highway 106 into Saskatchewan, I further realized how I had come full circle in life’s journey and was henceforth on an always moving forward path.
I thank Flin Flon for making me and for being such an interesting and strangely beautiful place.
The city has a rich sporting and arts and culture scene and is gateway to fishing paradise.
If you are looking for something unique and a bit near north far out and funky, I highly recommend Flin Flon.
Be advised you are way off the beaten track. If you are driving, make sure you keep your gas tank full, have a cooler with vittles and beverages and be prepared for restaurants to be open one night but closed the next, as the near north has the same post pandemic employment issues the rest of us have.
Areas photographed include: The Pas, Baker’s Narrows, Flin Flon, Denare Beach (Amisk Lake), Creighton and Highway 106 west of Flin Flon.
Learn more about what Flin Flon has to offer.
By Ian Cobb/e-KNOW
Photos/videos by Ian Cobb and Carrie Schafer
