Nobody hates the city itself, it’s the Torontonians that are the problem! 
Please don’t tell me they actually refer to a city of 150,000 as a “megacity”. Is that supposed to be tongue-in-cheek?
Exactly. Although to be more specific, it’s the Torontonians that have never been north of Highway 7 that are the problem.
How do you pack for a forest fire?
Nah, that’s probably a poor word choice on my part. There used to be the Regional Municipality of Sudbury, which was comprised of the City of Sudbury, and the surrounding suburbs/towns, including Rayside-Balfour, Valley East, Capreol, etc. Wiki article here. Anyways, in 2001, the City of Sudbury and the rest of the towns in the R.M. of Sudbury were amalgamated into the single entity of Greater Sudbury, or Grand-Sudbury in French.
Similar amalgamations have happened in Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton, which have been called “megacities” by some people.
Ignace and Atikokan are not currently under a fire ban right now, that I am aware. This is a map with the restricted burning areas highlighted. Pretty much the rest of Northern Ontario is under a ban. No campfires or fireworks. Propane stoves can be used for cooking and warmth, but be careful with them.
Can you buy crown land in Northern Ontario ? I eventually want to retire early buy a good piece of land, build a cabin and live off the grid and the local resources. I hear the mosquitos are nasty in NO, true ?
No but I will tell you a funny story.
When we first moved up there in 2000/2001 (I forget exactly when) he was in charge of getting the isotopes produced. They were always so far behind in production that they sometimes had trouble meeting their contractual obligations.
I asked him one day exactly how they go about making the isotopes and he told me. Well I could easily see how they were going about it all wrong time-wise and came up with a suggestion. He said “actually that’s a really good idea” and proposed it to his boss who had him implement my idea and it worked!
And that’s how I saved the plant.
True story. I was recently called by Decima and agreed to answer a survey about the RCMP.* At the end, there were a couple questions to categorize me, by income etc, and one was rural vs. small town vs. “large metropolitan area over 100,000.” I said, “Errr, I guess the last one, but that’s the first time I’ve ever heard Saskatoon called a large metropolitan area.”
*One of the questions was “Do you see the RCMP as compassionate?” I wanted to answer, “That depends, am I an eastern European in an airport holding a stapler?” But that wasn’t one of my options.
At 233 923 residents in the greater metropolitan area (defined by Stats Canada and the 2001/2006 Census), Saskatoon is in the Top 20 at number 17!
It doesn’t take long on that list before getting to under a half million people, and with that London still manages to be in the Top 10!
My cousin is RCMP. I still haven’t forgiven him for forgetting to wear his hat at my wedding!
How are the biting flies?
Well they like to anesthetize you first so you don’t notice them drinking your blood. Then you walk past a mirror and wonder why you’ve got dried up blood all over your head. If you go swimming and there’s a horse fly after you and you go underwater to get away from it, when you come back up, it will still be there, waiting. In the summer when it reaches 100% humidity, you’ll have black flies stuck all over you.
In other words, they really suck.
Forgot to add: at night if you hold your hand up to an opened, but screened in window, when you remove it, you’ll have a mosquito hand-print on the other side.
The Ministry of Natural Resources doesn’t actively market or sell Crown land for private recreational or residental use. Your best bet is probably to check various real estate listings on the Multiple Listing Service website.
It does appear, though, that you can seek out exclusive rights to a chunk of Crown land for commercial activity. The MNR website has some more information.
And yeah, the bugs can be bad, especially during the day. They don’t seem to be nearly as bad at night though.
See, now I always thought that ‘Northern Ontario’ started at Hearst and Horne Payne.
Learn something new everyday.