GREAT MOTOR HIGHWAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19736, 8 September 1927, Page 15

GREAT MOTOR HIGHWAY.

THROUGH CANADIAN WILDS. PARADE OF 500 CARS. [FROM our own correspondent.] TORONTO, Aug. 6. Before the end of the present month a provincial motor highway will be opened to "Cochrane, Ontario, which is 490 miles due Borth of Toronto and within 175 miles of Hudson Bay. On a continent which within a decade has been networked with hundreds of scenic highways this new route will provide an experience that will be unique. For a hundred miles north of Toronto the road runs through a picturesque though not unusual agricultural country. Then long stretches of wilderness, rockbound and wooded and punctuated with lumbering or mining towns make their appearance. At North Bay, which is less than halfway to Cochrane, the area of civilisation, as it was known a quarter of a century ago, is - left behind. Beyond everything is new and> for scores of miles the highway runs through virgin forest. When Cochrane is reached the famous mining camps at Cobalt, at Porcupine, at Kirkland Lake, at Rouyn, which hitherto have seemed inaccessible except to the adventurous, are left far to the south. For a generation hundreds of Americans have been visiting the Muskoka Lakes. Many of them maintain their elaborate summer residences. The other day there was seen on Lake Muskoka a party of 200 holiday-makers from a Pittsburgh club, taking possession of their camp. Hitherto visitors to Muskoka thought they were on the outside fringe of civilisation. And so they were. It is true no longer. Muskoka Wharf is only 107 miles from Toronto. Cochrane lies nearly 400 miles beyond. The famous summer resorts of Northern Ontario have viewed the invasion of motor roads with mixed feelings, generally tinged with hostility. These resorts prided themselves on their seclusion. Little lake boats called once a day or perhaps less frequently and a casual visit from a private launch was an event. But these days of seclusion are numbered for most of the resorts. When a visitor passed through Fcrt Carling, in the centre of the Muskoka Lakes, last week there was a line-up of parked motorcars that would have brought joy to a county town on market day. Nearby was a motor camp, a tented village, with expensive motor-cars from a dozen different American States. The new road is to be known as the Ferguson Highway, in honour of the present Premier of Ontario. Its formal opening is to be marked by a procession of 500 cars, the largest in Canada's history, which will travel over the whole route from Cochrane to Toronto, preceded by a fleet of floats depicting the resources of Ontario's northern playground and treasure chest.