The Thunder Bay Parade

What a grand parade of crooks, nut bars, visionaries, humanists, eccentrics,  nerds, mad artists, cranks, wild money makers, hard workers, radicals, musicians, ghosts, hermits, intellectuals, adventurers, and superhumans have careened down the streets of the Lakehead over the years. 

A local writers' group, Superior Scribes,  have memorialized twenty-two such Thunder Bayers in their book Movers and Mavericks of Thunder Bay.  A few pages outline each of the twenty-two lives. Walter Assef, is there, arguably the country's silliest and most ineffectual mayor. The great C.D. Howe, Minister of Everything, gets his stately due.  The well know Pearl Street business woman,  Lucille Simpson, livens up the group as does that annoying gad fly, Angus Cory.

Each author in Superior Scribes chose one or two historical figures,  researched each fully and wrote a short pithy account.. Accompanying each chapter is a photo, many excellent.  I found the photo of Xavier Michon particularly  poignant, his face showing sadness but also his strength and courage.

Congratulations to Lorna Olson, William Hryb, Maureen Nadin, Marianne Jones, Ron Chepesiuk,  Elle Andra Warner, and Peter Fergus-Moore. 

Of course this book has to be the first of many because I am sure that every local person who attended the launch at the Mary J. Black Library last Tuesday could think of fifty or more Movers or Mavericks who were part of our history.  My one complaint concerns the scarcity of women in the list - two movie stars, a wealthy woman and three madames, the last bundled together in one article.  This does not reflect Thunder Bay as we know it. What about Mayor Catherine Seppala who burned Lady Chatterley's Lover on the steps of Fort William City Hall or the redoubtable Sanna Kanasto who dedicated her life to radicalizing and helping women, or world famous writer Sheila Burnford, or for that matter, Greenmantle, who may or may not have been swept over the falls? 

Books available at Northern Woman's Bookshop, Court Stree,


Barbara Read, Film Star from Thunder Bay