Three jewels in the crown of
Northern Ontario:
New Liskeard,
Haileybury and
Cobalt. About 160
kilometres north of
North Bay. Maybe 15,000
souls all told.
The economy is a snapshot of all of Northern Ontario: Cobalt's a former mining town riddled
with tunnels
left from its glory days. Haileybury is where the rich folk from Cobalt used to
live; now it has the local jail, the courthouse, and a bunch of provincial
government offices. New Liskeard is a farming community -- there's a rich band of
soil left here during the last ice age by a retreating glacier -- as well as having
a sawmill, the only high school for maybe 60 kilometres in any direction, and the
mall.
They all used to
be on Highway 11, but that was too twisty and not direct enough so a bypass was
built. Now New Liskeard is the only one near the highway proper, and Haileybury and
Cobalt are on the Scenic Route, 11B.