If you ever wondered where Porquis Junction got its name, we have the most likely answer from. Timmins Museum director-curator Karen Bachmann.
“What we have and what we are thinking and what people have said to us is that Porquis Junction is actually a combination of names,” she says, “one being Porcupine and the other one Iroquois Falls. It was a train stop between the two communities, so it was Porquis Junction.”
You don’t hear the “Junction” reference much anymore, but it also refers to the rail line splitting there, and going either west to the Porcupine mining camp or north to Cochrane.
While we’re in the vicinity, Bachmann tells us from whom the former Ansonville area of Iroquois Falls got its name.
“The community of Ansonville was named for Montreal businessman Frank Anson, who believe strongly in the potential for Northern Ontario,” Bachmann explains. “In 1912, he and Shirley Ogilvie were granted a pulpwood concession of over one million acres, and this led to the establishment of the Abitibi Paper Company and the largest newsprint mill in North America at that time.”
A monument to Frank Anson is in Anson Park, located in the middle of the Abitibi townsite.