Sudbury, Ontario

We crossed the Sault St. Marie International bridge and then waited in the immigration car line for about an hour. We showed our passports and our negative COVID test results, and were waved on through into Canada. Hooray!

We headed east on the Trans Canada Highway. Greater Sudbury was an overnight stop to break up the long drive to Montreal. Once again, we found ourselves in a historic mining city - this time famous for nickel ore. The landscape was dominated by the smokestacks of ore smelters.

We learned later that the great big chimney is the famous Inco Superstack, which at 1,250 ft is the tallest chimney in the Western hemisphere, and the second-tallest structure in Canada (only the CN Tower is taller).

Nearly a century of mining took a heavy toll on Sudbury. The smelters emitted sulphur gasses that created acid rain. This decimated the local vegetation and stained the surrounding rocks black. The Superstack reduced pollution by dispersing the sulphur gases high in the air, where winds would blow them away from the city. And other rehabilitation efforts, like spreading lime and planting trees, have helped the ecology to recover.

Before leaving Sudbury, we stopped to see the Big Nickel at Dynamic Earth, a science center focused on mining. It certainly is BIG - it's 30 ft high and 2 ft thick! But it's made of stainless steel, not nickel. It was built as Sudbury's way of celebrating the Canadian Centennial.