Timmins phototour

[Brighter Hell]

three hours north of sudbury is timmins, home to lumber, mining, and a tourism industry built entirely on shania twain. it's impossible to go to timmins without knowing that it's shania's hometown - she's on billboard after billboard on all the highways leading into the city. downtown has some impressive floral displays but a few too many vacant stores. it's generally busier than in these pictures - they were taken pretty early in the morning.

[thryve]

most of these ontario towns depress me ....

[Hillis]

Um, why?

[vid]

Because their economies are practically dead, and the city is depressed. Timmins probably had about 65,000 people in it's hayday, now they're down near 40,000. Almost every city and town in Northern Ontario is close to lifeless.

As for southern Ontario, they have a government that cares.

Timmins isn't too bad looking. Lots of nice architecture.

[softee]

Timmins' population peaked at around 47,000 in the 80s, so it hasn't declined that much since then, and it's far from lifeless. I was in Timmins last May and found it to be an alright enough place, although it's not really my cup of tea -- it lacks old brick houses and tree lined streets and is too much of a tough-looking resource type city for my tastes.

[Victoria]

Not bad, thanks for sharing.

[ScraperDude]

I heard that Northern Ontario is sometimes neglected because of Southern Ontario.....
Anyone have insight to this? Also Timmins looks nice. I am impressed.

[rbt]

I heard that Northern Ontario is sometimes neglected because of Southern Ontario....

Northern Ontario has the same problem as most of the Canadian East coast did. They're a supply side economy that has, over time, run out of product or demand for their product but they haven't diversified into other activities.

Anything the government has or hasn't done would only change the timeframe involved but not the end result. It is virtually impossible for a government to encourage long term economic growth of a region.

Most try to do it by attracting successful businesses from elsewhere but it has been proven time and time again that it is a temporary solution to a long term problem, and often makes it far more difficult at a later time. Mobile businesses, like the ones they would attract, will quickly move out once the advantage (cheap resources, government subsidies, etc.) are gone.

I don't like the Ontario Government spending billions attracting car manufacturers to the province either. I think we would be much further ahead to spend that money helping the laid off auto workers start up small businesses making parts. Grow new local businesses that would have roots in the province instead of quick/temporary job deal.