Nakina is a community in the Town of Greenstone in the

Thunder Bay District Thunder Bay District is a district#Ontario, district and Census divisions of Canada, census division in Northwestern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario. The County seat, district seat is Thunder Bay. Most of the district (93.5%) is uni ...

Northern Ontario Northern Ontario is a primary geographic and quasi-administrative region of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario, the other primary region being Southern Ontario. Most of the core geographic region is located on p ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. It is approximately north of Geraldton, located along the

Canadian National Railway The Canadian National Railway Company () is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN is Canada's largest railway, in terms of both revenue a ...

. The origins of the town were initially support of the railway, but its economy has evolved through lumber, pulp and paper, mining and tourism. It has a population of about 500 people. It was a separate municipality from 1978 until 2001, when it was amalgamated with the former Township of Beardmore, and the Towns of Geraldton and Longlac. Its name is an indigenous word meaning "meeting place".

History

Nakina was first established in 1913 as

flag stop In public transport, a request stop, flag stop, or whistle stop is a bus stop, stop or train station, station at which buses or trains, respectively, stop only on request; that is, only if there are passengers or freight to be picked up or drop ...

on the

National Transcontinental Railway The National Transcontinental Railway (NTR) was a historic railway between Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Moncton, New Brunswick, in Canada. Much of the line is now operated by the Canadian National Railway. The Grand Trunk partnership The completion o ...

(NTR), between the

divisional point In Canada and also in the United States, a divisional point (or division point) is a local operational headquarters for a railway. Divisional points are significant in railway maintenance of way operations. Especially historically, they could be the ...

s of Grant and Armstrong. Nakina was at Mile 15.9 of the NTR's Grant Sub-Division. After the NTR was nationalized into the Canadian National Railway (CNR) in 1923, the CNR decided to create a "shortcut" between the tracks of the

Canadian Northern Railway The Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) was a historic Canada, Canadian transcontinental railway. At its 1923 merger into the Canadian National Railway , the CNoR owned a main line between Quebec City and Vancouver via Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Edmonto ...

at Longlac to the National Transcontinental Railway at Nakina (called the Longlac-Nakina Cut-Off), which would reduce travel time by 4 hours. This prompted the development of the town, since Nakina replaced Grant (25 kilometers to the east) as the new divisional point. A repair and refueling complex, including a new large 2-storey station, was built at Nakina. The entire town of Grant was moved by

flatcar A flatcar (US) (also flat car, or flatbed) is a piece of rolling stock that consists of an open, flat deck mounted on trucks (US) or bogies (UK) at each end. Occasionally, flat cars designed to carry extra heavy or extra large loads are mounted ...

s to the new Nakina town site, including a store house, the 12-stall round house with machine shop and 75' turntable, 200-ton coal plant, 1,000-ton ice house, 70,000-gallon water tank, and staff resthouse. The community was briefly renamed Thornton Junction, after Henry Worth Thornton, then president of the CNR. From the 1920s on, Nakina prospered as an important railway service stop. During World War II, there was also a radar base on the edge of the town, intended to watch for a potential attacks on the strategically important locks at

Sault Ste. Marie Sault Ste. Marie may refer to: People * Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, a Native American tribe in Michigan Places * Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada ** Sault Ste. Marie (federal electoral district), a Canadian federal electora ...

between

Lake Superior Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface areaThe Caspian Sea is the largest lake, but is saline, not freshwater. Lake Michigan–Huron has a larger combined surface area than Superior, but is normally considered tw ...

and

Lake Huron Lake Huron ( ) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is shared on the north and east by the Canadian province of Ontario and on the south and west by the U.S. state of Michigan. The name of the lake is derived from early French ex ...

. Research into the radar site in the

National Archives of Canada Library and Archives Canada (LAC; ) is the federal institution tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. The national archive and library is the 16th largest library in the world. Th ...

indicates that it was largely a

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

operation, that pre-dated the later

Pinetree Line The Pinetree Line was a series of radar stations located across southern Canada at about the 50th parallel north, along with a number of other stations located on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Run by North American Aerospace Defense Comm ...

radar bases that were erected shortly thereafter focussing on the cold-war threat. The Nakina base was totally removed shortly after the war. In 1955, the road from Geraldton to Nakina was built, connecting it with the Trans-Canada Highway. The introduction of diesel locomotives after World War II meant that service and maintenance could be consolidated at points much more distant from one another than had been common in the first half of the 20th century. As a result, the value of Nakina as a railway service community greatly diminished. In 1958, the last steam engine left Nakina. Railway shops closed in the 1960s, and its status as a maintenance centre ended in 1986, when trains would no longer stop to change crews. That same year Nakina ceased to be a station stop. In the 1970s, pulp and paper operations near the town offset the decline in railway employment. In 1978, the place was incorporated as the Township of Nakina and had a peak population of nearly 1000 in the 1981 census. In 2001, Nakina was amalgamated with the former Township of Beardmore and the Towns of Geraldton and Longlac, together with previously

unorganized area An unorganized area or unorganized territory () is any geographic region in Canada that does not form part of a municipality or Indian reserve. In these areas, the lowest level of government is Provinces and territories of Canada, provincial or te ...

s, into the new municipality of Greenstone.

Demographics

Economy

In March 2018, The North West Company shuttered the town's Northern Store branch, deeming it no longer financially sustainable. This closure represented the loss of the last major retail outlet in Nakina. , the town remains focused on

tourism Tourism is travel for pleasure, and the Commerce, commercial activity of providing and supporting such travel. World Tourism Organization, UN Tourism defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as ...

, diminished pulp and paper operations, and support of other more northern communities (food, fuel and transportation). Mining and minerals industries are seen as a possible source of further growth, including via a potential all-season road link to the

Ring of Fire The Ring of Fire (also known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Rim of Fire, the Girdle of Fire or the Circum-Pacific belt) is a tectonic belt of volcanoes and earthquakes. It is about long and up to about wide, and surrounds most of the Pa ...

mining project.

Transportation

Access to the remote northern community is via Highway 584 from Highway 11 at Geraldton. Nakina is served by

Via Rail Via Rail Canada Inc. (), operating as Via Rail or Via (stylized as VIA Rail), is a Canadian Crown corporation that operates intercity passenger rail service in Canada. As of December 2023, Via Rail operates 406 trains per week across eight ...

's ''

The Canadian ''The Canadian'' () is a transcontinental passenger train operated by Via Rail with service between Union Station in Toronto, Ontario, and Pacific Central Station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Canadian Pacific introduced this serv ...

'' train. and by charter flights at the Nakina Airport. Nakina Water Aerodrome is just north of the community on Cordingley Lake, where a float plane service provides transport to a variety of different lakes.

References

External links

{{Thunder Bay District Communities in Thunder Bay District Former towns in Ontario