Thunder Bay Ontario - Ron Brown's book, "Rails Across Ontario", is another of those pretty, heritage-looking books that you see in museums or coffee shops catering to tourists.
 
If I had glanced at the book in one of those shops, I likely would not have picked it up.
 
Not my kind of read.
 
That would have been my loss.
 
The slim volume is a reader's treasure of both historical and contemporary railway lore.
 
Written in plan language, with occasional passages of near poetic description, and richly illustrated, the book is an accessible read.
 
Thunder Bay, is of course, a railway town.
 
Or was.
 
While CN and CP still own significant property and bridges in our city, their influence is not as great as it once was, when Port Arthur and Fort William were bursting at their boundaries, fueled by rail expansion throughout all of Canada.
 
Thunder Bay and region get thorough and careful attention in Brown's book.
 
Ships brought settlers to our shores, but rail helped push that settlement in all directions.
 
And our city fathers "gave away" great tracts of prime property, often along our precious waterfront, to secure the development that would surely follow the laying of rails.
 
Brown uncovers rail lore all across the province, some familiar to me, others not.
 
I did have the good fortune to take the Agawa Canyon trip, out of Sault Ste. Marie, some 30 years ago.
 
The line still exists and is still taking tourist traffic into the beauty of our Northern forest.
 
Here is Brown's description of the current service:  "The layover in the Agawa Canyon allows time to hike the trails or to climb to a lookout high above the canyon. For those who want to replicate the Group of Seven experience, a caboose has been retrofitted as a small cottage, complete with beds and propane-powered stove heater and lighting."
 
He writes with factual data and visual fascination about the many railway bridges, grand, and not-so-grand stations, and several ghost towns attached to abandoned rail lines, spread across the province.
 
He even includes a brief section on "castles" built near railways.
 
Brown is a geographer, freelance travel writer, and past chairman of the Writer's Union of Canada.
 
He has written and had published more than 20 books.
 
Michael Sobota.