Royal Canadian Mounted Police Station.
In the centre of the photo is a blue maintenance garage with large white doors. Partially hidden behind the garage is the hockey arena.
Birch Narrows Dene Nation water treatment plant.
In the centre of the photograph is a narrow clearing among the trees on the far shore of the lake. This is where the houses of a new subdivision are being built by the Birch Narrows Dene Nation. There is only one house between the edge of the current community where this photo was taken and the new subdivision.
When I first arrived in my pickup truck and drove around Turnor Lake on September 2, 2008 I was very impressed by what I saw. It was a small community of dirt roads and small cottage style homes among the trees. From many places in the community you could see the lake. The lake shore was never very far away. A healthy teenager could walk anywhere in the community and explore some of the paths through the forest. There was none of the gigantic buildings, traffic, lights, noise or crowds that I had left behind in a southern city. It appeared to be the perfect vacation community for families from the city to visit and enjoy their summer holidays. I was presuming of course that a family could go swimming, fishing, boating and hiking for little or no cost here in a quiet, relaxing and safe environment.
Everything seemed to be perfect. I felt happy and content that I had made the right decision in agreeing to come to Turnor Lake to live and teach. Then I opened the door of my truck and stepped outside for the first time ...
BANG! Within seconds blackflies started swarming around me. The longer I spent outside the more blackflies I was attracting. They were both numerous and vicious.
It is because of the blackflies that the above photographs appear to be deserted of all animals and almost all people. No living creature with blood flowing through their arteries could survive the onslaught of the blackflies for more than a few minutes. Everyone and their pets were trapped inside trying to hide from the blackflies.
It took me many attempts to shoot my collection of autumn photographs of Turnor Lake. I would dart in and out of my house or vehicle to take a few photographs at a time. Some of my photos were ruined by too many blackflies landing on the lense of the camera as I tried to take a picture.
I met one neighbour who referred to the pesky insects as sandflies. I would have to agree with the logic that the soil throughout the region was very sandy so it would make sense that the local residents might name the local insects after such a sandy environment. But I had spent many of my summers as a youth camping in northern Ontario about 3300 kilometres to the southeast of Turnor Lake. To me a sandfly is an extremely small, nearly invisible, biting insect. A sandfly is often called a no-see-um in northern Ontario because you usually do not see the insect. You just feel its bite. In contrast, the insects that were terrorizing Turnor Lake were quite visible. They looked and behaved exactly like the winged, black, biting insects with roundish, plump shaped bodies that I had known as blackflies during the summers that I spent in northern Ontario.
Here is a picture ruined by blackflies. The many dark grey blurry spots on this picture are blackflies that were either walking on the camera lense or flying directly in front of it as I tried to shoot this picture of a residential street in Turnor Lake. At the time there was a swarm of blackflies flying around me and trying to land on every conceivable part of my clothing, hair and skin. Distracted by the swarm, and therefore trying to work quickly, I did not notice these few out of focus blackflies as I peered through the camera viewfinder while taking this picture.
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