Yeah, I've seen pictures. The town was laid out by the mining company (Sherritt Gordon I believe), so it's got one of those great indoor complexes with a mall/bank/playground/ice rink/school that just sits dormant. My grandfather was the chief engineer at the mine, and my father worked for Indian Affairs.dhkendall wrote: I think I heard somewhere that Leaf Rapids is basically a ghost town now since the mine closed several years ago.
My favourite memory was seeing our brown Jeep Eagle (great in those northern Manitoba winters) getting loaded off and onto the train from Churchill to Thompson.dhkendall wrote: We moved from Gillam to Winnipeg in the dead of winter too (mid January, 1980), but I don't recall any problems of that magnitude. (I do remember our furniture, which did come by train since, as Adam points out, PR 280 wasn't built yet, wasn't at our new Winnipeg house when we got there, so it *may* have been delayed by cold, but I don't think I was ever told why the furniture wasn't there then.)
and roadgeek - I can't believe someone actually wants to visit these places. We moved from Churchill to Haida Gwaii in the late 80's, and I remember thinking, even as a youngster: "Why do people CHOOSE to live in places like northern Manitoba? Do they know there are other places to live?" Now that I'm married to a girl from Thunder Bay I think the same thing about northern Ontario. "You people vacation here? Are you aware that there are places in Canada without bugs?"