Biscotasing (or Bisco), located on Lake Biscotasi some 120 kilometres to the northwest of Sudbury, owes its existence to the railroads — specifically, the Canadian Pacific Railway, which, in the early 1880s, was punching its way across the Canadian hinterland tie by tie, rail by rail, to link the east and west coasts of this vast country.
By 1884, as the first CPR divisional point or local operational headquarters west of Sudbury, Biscotasing was humming. Facilities on the site included freight sheds, sidings, a wye for turning locomotives, coal chutes, and a watering tower. Among the staff were three telegraphers, 15 engineers, and 15 firemen. Boarding houses, shanties, and tents sprang up to accommodate a fluctuating population of workers and hangers-on — sneak thieves, professional gamblers, brothel keepers, and the like — which at times numbered more than 500.
Bisco scored a mention in The Last Spike, Pierre Berton’s sweeping account of the construction of the CPR between 1881 and 1885. It was one of the spots that welcomed Canadian troops with a warm meal in April 1885 as they were rushed over the half-completed railway system to crush the North-West Rebellion in Saskatchewan.
One of the busiest areas in that busy settlement was known as Whiskeyville. There, men with monickers like Big Louis, Perrault, and Sodet plied their trade: the production and sale of adulterated liquor, which went for around 25 cents a glass or $10 a bottle. Their modus operandi was simple but effective. On the 15th of the month, railway construction workers would flock into town with their pay, sometimes as much as $400, burning a hole in their pockets. As described in the Globe newspaper in August 1885, the booze peddlers would set up a tent, “watch the coming cars for men, get them in if they have a show of money, drug them, then rob them, or, as was frequently the case last winter, waylay them after night and take their all.”
The beginning of trestle two and a half miles east of Biscotasing. (Canadian Transport Sourcebook)
A sinister case in point occurred in April 1885, when a man described as “a Swede or Finlander” fell victim to one such attack. As the Globe sombrely reported: “In his flight he ran towards a lake close by and was either thrown or fell in, breaking through the ice… His body was not found until sometime in May. A post mortem examination was held. Marks of violence, contusions, and bruises appeared about the face and head. Nothing was found to identify him. All his friends had gone, and nothing more could be done but to bury him.”
Despite the best efforts of the CPR’s six-man contingent of railway constables and the magistrate appointed by the Ontario government, the peddlers continued to operate with impunity; their profits were so high that they could easily afford to pay a $20 or $40 fine and simply begin afresh.
Biscotasing, Ontario, "C.P.R. Station Bisco": situated 89 miles west of Sudbury, November 1915. (Library and Archives Canada/R6990-211-8-E)
The situation came to an ugly head in July, when Sodet was summoned to appear before Mr. A. McNaughton, the district magistrate, for illegally selling liquor. When Sodet didn’t turn up in court, a warrant was issued for his arrest, and constables Scott and Hayes were dispatched to execute it. When they arrived at Sodet’s tent on July 27, they were set upon by a mob of some 15 or 20 ruffians. The gang knocked down the two constables, kicked them, and beat them with their own batons. Hayes was seriously wounded and left for dead.
The assailants, brandishing batons, sticks, and other weapons, conducted military drills for a time and fired a volley toward CPR authorities. They then “turned their attention to the respectable quarter of the town and molested the peaceable citizens,” even uttering dire threats against the magistrate himself.
This was the last straw.
McNaughton alerted the Ontario attorney general in Toronto to the alarming situation. Government Detective Joseph Rogers was immediately commissioned to put together a special squad to deal with the perpetrators of what had become a full-blown riot.
Headlines from the August 14, 1885; August 17, 1885; and August 26, 1885, editions of the Globe.
On Thursday, August 6, a 10-man detachment left Toronto on a CPR train, which covered the 1,100-odd kilometres in two days, chugging into town on Saturday afternoon.
Ringleaders of the riot were on hand to meet the train. On learning that there were policemen on board, however, they hastily decamped into the woods, with the officers in hot pursuit.
After losing their quarry, the policemen lost no time in raiding Whiskeyville, where they arrested three men in a shanty and three women in a “house of prostitution.”
On Sunday, the outlaws regrouped to launch an attack on the police. Rogers and his men were carrying .44-calibre Smith & Wesson revolvers; to increase their firepower, they armed themselves with rifles from the railroad company’s stores. The officers “completely overawed the roughs, whose courage,” the Globe noted dryly, had “certainly proved of the Dutch persuasion.”
In all, 20 individuals were arrested. Four of the rioters were sent to Pembroke jail to await trial for the assault on constables Hayes and Scott; 13 liquor dealers were each fined $40 with costs or two months in jail; and the three women were fined and sent to jail for two months. Railway staff tore down about 20 shanties and tents that had been used as bases for the illicit sales, and quantities of whiskey, beer, porter, and high wine or adulterated spirits were destroyed — some 300 gallons in all.
The ringleaders, as is so often the case, slipped through the net. Reportedly, they hired a local Indigenous guide to take them along the Spanish River to Georgian Bay, where they could find a boat.
Buoyed by the prospect of peace and quiet for the first time in months, the grateful villagers rewarded Detective Rogers before he left with “an address and a gold locket.”
Immersive railway voyage through Canadian Shield wilderness | TRIPPING Train 185
Bisco’s heyday was short-lived: in 1886, it lost its status as a railway town when the CPR moved its divisional hub westward to Chapleau. The number of residents dwindled; left behind was a scattering of railroad workers, lumbermen, and fur trappers.
Bisco’s fortunes yo-yoed over the years. Early in the 20th century, logging and sawmills brought prosperity back to the area. By 1911, the population had swelled to around 300, and the village boasted a school, a hospital, two churches, a new general store and post office, and a new railway station.
A prominent — but notorious — resident at that time was Archibald Stansfeld Belaney, an Englishman who described himself as the son of a Scottish man and an Apache woman and who took on the Indigenous persona of Grey Owl, or Wa-sha-quon-asin. Although Belaney was denounced as an imposter after his death in 1938, his fame as a forest ranger, conservationist, writer, public speaker, and defender of First Nations peoples lives on.
Grey Owl (Archibald Stansfeld Belaney), ca. 1925 - 1935. (Library and Archives Canada/1960-124 NPC)
Disaster struck in June 1913.
A fire broke out in a small shack beside the Catholic church, and within minutes the church was ablaze. High winds drove the flames toward the houses, stores, sawmill, and lumber yards, and despite the frantic efforts of the locals to bring water up from the lake — “they might as well have tried to put out the fire with a sponge,” lamented the Globe — Bisco was wiped out. Total losses were estimated at around $400,000.
One of the buildings destroyed in the conflagration was the Hudson’s Bay Company store. Hudson’s Bay had been established in Bisco in 1887 as a supply depot on land leased from the CPR, but the store burned down the following year. It was rebuilt and served first as a fur-trade post then as a sales shop. Following the fire of 1913, the store was again rebuilt, but, in February 1927, it again burned down to the ground — for the last time. That disaster signalled the end of HBC’s 40 years of operation in Biscotasing.
The sawmill, too, closed in 1927, and although there was an uptick in lumbering jobs in the 1930s, it proved to be short-lived.
By 1956, Bisco reportedly had a population of around 150 residents, but by 1972, when the school was closed, there were between 50 and 100 people living in the village. The fine railway station was taken down in the mid-1990s.
Today, Bisco is described as a partial ghost town. It has a year-round population of between 20 and 30, although the area comes alive during the summer months, with visitors enjoying camping, fishing, and canoeing.
Today, Bisco has a year-round population of between 20 and 30, (Rob Grambau/Wikimedia)
The mighty CPR is long gone from the area. Nowadays, the village is serviced by Via Rail trains 185 (westbound) and 186 (eastbound), which operate three days a week between Sudbury and White River. Bisco’s station is listed on the Via Rail website as a “Sign Post,” and the train “stops on request when traveller is seen by train staff.”
The Biscotasing General Store is open year-round, supplying basic goods to locals and visitors.
As a faint echo of the past, folks can still stock up on alcoholic beverages in Biscotasing, but nowadays their favourite tipple is available only through a small outlet in the store, which is strictly regulated by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario — a far cry from the toxic potions that went for 25 cents a glass and $10 a bottle in those far-off rambunctious days of 1885, when “whiskey barons” like Big Louis, Perrault, and Sodet peddled their illicit wares.
Sources: “Biscotasing” (ghosttownpix.com/Ontario); Chasing the Muse: Canada by Lloyd Walton (FriesenPress, 2019); the Globe editions of August 14, 1885, August 17, 1885, August 26 1885, June 14, 1913; the Globe and Mail edition of February 3, 1940; “Hudson’s Bay Company. Biscotasing” (Archives of Manitoba, Keystone Archives Descriptive Database); The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881 – 1885 by Pierre Berton (Anchor Canada, 2001); Ontario’s Ghost Town Heritage by Ron Brown (Boston Mills Press, 2007).