People here laugh modestly when you suggest their town is a living museum.
About 250 Ojibway occupy a picturesque mish-mash of houses on this breathtaking point of sandy beaches that reaches into Attawapiskat Lake.
Ramshackle plank sidewalks stream through the village, as in cowboy movies. Landsdowne House commerce revolves around the village`s reason for existence, an old Hudson`s Bay outpost, now called the Northern Store.
A picturesque wooden causeway links the peninsula to a tiny island that holds the Catholic church, a sawmill, the 51-year-old Trappers` Co-op store and the rustic cemetery. Local art fills the church, including modernistic stations of the cross by Sandy Sagutch, a local artist who moved to Toronto to make a name for himself. The priest rents rooms in the rectory, mostly to overnighting pilots and government workers.
The townsfolk want to move 10 miles away, to a subdivision on higher ground where their homes won`t twist into the melting permafrost.
They shake their heads at the idea that their town-reachable chiefly by plane from Pickle Lake and Fort Hope 300 miles north of Thunder Bay-represents perfect isolation, the ultimate getaway, an ideal jumping-off place for a burgeoning Indian-based tourism industry.
”People would come here just to rent boats, read books, lay on the beach and walk around watching natives do their thing,” a meeting of bemused Ojibway leaders is told.
”All they`d need is a nice place to stay and a place to eat.”
Mike Belliveau, general manager of the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation Development Fund in Thunder Bay, said one-third of the 46 Indian settlements in northern Ontario compare in charm and quality to Landsdowne House.
He sees a time when tourists commonly visit remote settlements for a day or a week.
”We`re still a few years away from effectively marketing the cultural experience,” said Jim Kayfes, director of marketing for Moccasin Trails, an arm of the Northern Ontario Native Tourism Association.
”But it`s starting. We`ll bring people to a place like this and fly them out to outpost lakes. They`ll come here with their wives and kids, and the ones who don`t want to fish will hang around and simply revel in being this far north in such a beautiful place.”
