Today's research has put me in touch with members of a family that have been friends of my family for 3 (going on 4) generations.  The Berdusco's and the Morrison's were neighbors on Station Road when they first moved to Wawa in 1939-40.  My Grandmother Hilda often talked about Grandma and Grandpa Berdusco...I even remember visiting with them in their home on Broadway.  I thought it was the coolest thing that they lived up a flight of stairs over a store and had a view of both Wawa Lake and Broadway Avenue.

My Father John and Aunt Madeline grew up with the long list of Berdusco kids...and then of course my brother Matthew and I loved our Berdusco visits to Orillia, the annual summer visits with Paul, and attending high school with Elaine and Sheila.

Today's research brings back all those warm memories...but my true intention is to focus on the oldest 2nd generation Berdusco boy...Atillio.  With the help of some members of the family I am starting to pin down a life history of this charismatic man for inclusion in a local mining heritage project later this year.  The dramatic focus will be on the 1955 Block II Pillar Blast at the New Helen Mine which he was instrumental in coordinating.

When Tillio flicked a switch on September 24, 1955, 153 tonnes of dynamite exploded 1 MILLION tonnes of rock.  This blast was the largest controlled underground blast of its kind in Canadian mining history.  Worthy of mention don't you think?

As I type the title of this, my first blog, I realize that it is not quite accurate.   The "blogger" I want to talk about is from the early 1900's, and there were certainly a number of more prominent explorers, scientists, cartographers and adventurers who journalled and documented their findings and exploits along the east shore well before the 20th century.  That being said...

Kirkland B. Alexander.  We cross paths again!  A year ago your work came to me in the form of "The North Shore Log - 1910"...first the original journal with photos...then the hard cover publication.  Now I find you tucked into one of my Mother's numerous boxes of research as the "Pipe River Log - 1923".

Your daily journalling reveals the exploits of 8 gentlemen fishermen of some financial standing (enough to afford the $5.00 fishing license for U.S. residents visiting Canada) who board the steamer Caribou in Sault, ON and head for Pukaskwa River, Pipe River and Red Sucker Cove for a week of fishing.  The reader is sometimes left to wonder at your teasing remarks that can only be de-coded as an inside joke which perhaps only a "gentleman" fisherman would be able to decipher.  Other entries, however, give us a fantastic sense of the true experience in travelling the shoreline by ferry, canoe or on foot.

Your description of travelling with 80+ lumberjacks and their families and supplies destined for Pukaskwa on the Caribou leaves me wondering if anyone enjoyed this mode of transportation at all.  Your journal entry describing Jack Cadotte's retelling of the Wreck of the Reliance in 1922 conjures images of a classic campfire scene complete with an Ojibway story-teller, dramatic backdrop, and the smell of pipe tobacco and driftwood smoke.

For those interested in reading Kirkland B. Alexander's Log in its entirety I will scan as a pdf and link it here soon.  But in the meantime...I include his last paragraph to make us yearn for a warm summer day on the Superior shoreline.

"We miss the bouquet of pine and balsam.  We prefer the noise of surf and the minor song of kas-kas-ka-nig-gee.  We are positive that the wilderness is preferable to the most advanced civilization; that nature should never have been contaminated by man.  We are all engulfed in that curious lethargy that one experiences in the first hours of return from the Superior country - a physical and mental reluctance to slip back into the groove, a sort of bewildernment, vague alarm and hesitation, a moment midway between sleep and awakening."    
            K.B.A.  October 30, 1923