For the next several weeks, we are going to celebrate summer and Timmins history with a look back at favourite swimming spots in the Porcupine Mining Camp through the years.
Timmins Museum director-curator Karen Bachmann takes the first plunge.
“The first mentions that you get about swimming or anything related to swimming is in July of 1912. There’s a huge, huge kind of celebration happening and in the community what they’re doing is bringing everybody to Porcupine Lake and there’s big swim competitions.
“Hundred-yard swims in Porcupine Lake, very competitive and this happens across the north. So you get your champions out of there and they compete in Cochrane and Haileybury and all those good things. So people are using that lake a lot for recreation at that time, a lake that we don’t use so much anymore.”
More in the weeks to come. Next week: A lake that you probably didn’t realize was ever used as a swimming hole.
