Smoky Falls Railway Line
R.L.Kennedy
Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company, Limited operated its own railway in Northern Ontario for many years. Known as the Smoky Line, it was a non-common carrier railway running some 50 miles north from Kapuskasing to a power plant in Smoky Falls built to serve their paper mill. Originally, it was intended to build the power plant at Sturgeon Falls on the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario. Later, the railway served its owner for decades hauling pulpwood to their newsprint paper mill. It also served the residents of Smoky Falls which was without a road until 1974. The railway also served construction work on a six-year (1960-1966) Hydro-electric project on the Mattagami River that consisted of three generating stations. This required a daily mixed train to Little Long Rapids. In 1946 a 10.5 mile spur was built to Neshin Lake to pickup wood from the Opasatika River watershed.
Kapuskasing was first named MacPherson Station circa 1905 with the coming of the National Transcontinental (NTR) being built through the area. To avoid confusion with a like-named place in Manitoba, in 1917 it was re-named Kapuskasing, Indian for “Bend in the River”.
In 1914 during World War I a POW camp was created on 1,300 acres which was cleared for an experimental farm, in an isolated area of which Ontario had many! Of the over 1,200 prisoners interned there, there was not one successful escape. Its extreme cold in winter and year round isolation obviously discouraged that!