Last summer in Moosonee

Before I went up to Moosonee last summer, everyone I talked to said "You'll see a lot of changes. Things have changed. etc." Some of the comments seemed to say that Moosonee would "look worse" to me. The people telling me this either lived in Moosonee or visited there from time to time so I was quite curious what I would see.  I had been to Moosonee about 30 times between 1993 and 2006 but I hadn't been up there in seven years.

What was my overall impression of mid-August Moosonee? It seemed pretty quiet. The train going both ways had lots of people on board, but Moosonee itself seemed peaceful--read 'quiet'. The Polar Princess was closed down so I guess that was a main reason why there didn't seem to be a lot of tourists coming back and forth downtown. Even the streets in Moose Factory seemed almost deserted--or at least the part around the old Hudson's Bay Company. I know there are at least 2,000 people living on the Island and 2,500 or more on the mainland but we were the only ones walking around the HBC post at about 10:30 in the morning on a Thursday.  Actually I need to remind myself that people were already at work by then or even away on vacation. A woman drove by and then stopped to ask if we needed directions--which was really nice of her. She also said that we were a bit early in the day for tourists.

What about the town of Moosonee itself? The yards looked really tidy and some had nice flowers. The waterfront /shoreline area was the best I'd seen it in a long time. It was good to see that the shoreline rehabilitation seemed to have worked and that people were walking by and sitting watching the river and the water taxis coming and going. When we first got there I couldn't wait to get on the river and go over to the Island--it's always so nice to be buzzing along the Moose river in a freighter canoe.