Northwestern Ontario
As told by Ditch
Thunder Bay: a church that serves coffee, and four more things worth the detour
Sleeping Giant and the Terry Fox Monument earn every word written about them. This is what sits a few blocks off that route.
Five stops, in walking order.
Thunder Bay anchors the top of Lake Superior, where the Trans-Canada Highway splits through downtown. Most drivers pass through on their way somewhere bigger. A few of the best things here are a five-minute detour from that highway, not a special trip.
The Habit Coffee & Bakeshop
A working coffeehouse inside a converted church at 308 Red River Road, stained glass windows intact, seating built from the original pews. It's run by volunteers under a group called Urban Abbey, the coffee comes from J.J. Bean in Vancouver, and the proceeds support local women's shelters and food programs. The building is the point, and so is where the money goes.
Trowbridge Falls
A set of cascades on the Current River, a short walk from the parking area on a paved path, inside a park that also has hiking and biking trails and a few good wading spots. It's the kind of waterfall that never makes the postcard rack because nobody's marketed it as one.
Westfort, on Frederica Street
Westfort is the oldest business district in Northwestern Ontario, and Frederica Street is still the spine of it. Black Cat Antiques has been at it since 1993, in its current storefront since 2003.
Fort William, and the nation next door
Fort William Historical Park is a rebuilt version of the North West Company's old inland fur-trade headquarters, costumed interpreters included. What the reconstruction gets right is who else was there. Period paintings from 1805 and 1808 record an Anishinaabe encampment just outside the fort's palisade, and the park's own historical materials are clear that Indigenous workers staffed the canoe shed, fur stores, kitchen and farm, and that the birch bark canoes, snowshoes, and moccasins they made are what let the fur trade function at all. That community is still here. Fort William First Nation is an Ojibwe nation of about 960 people, a signatory to the Robinson-Superior Treaty of 1850, and its land borders the city on the south. The mountain visible from downtown is Anemki Wajiw, Thunder Mountain, marked Mount McKay on most maps. Animikie is the Ojibwe word for thunder, and it's the root the city's own name comes from. The public lookout and hiking trails up there are on Fort William First Nation land, and the First Nation holds its own powwow most years in late June or early July. Check with them directly for current access, hours, and powwow dates before you go.
The Ahnisnabae Art Gallery
Founded in 1997 by Woodland School painter Roy Thomas, now run by his widow Louise and son Randy, showing more than 140 artists, many of them Indigenous, including Norval Morrisseau. Ditch's opinion, not a plaque: it's one of the more serious places in the country to see this work in person, and most people driving through Thunder Bay never hear about it.
Getting between them
None of these five are far from the Trans-Canada as it runs through the city. Fort William and the gallery pair well on the same stop; Westfort and Trowbridge Falls are their own detour, worth doing together if you've got the rest of the afternoon free.