Lonely Planet, the world-famous travel guide, calls Thompson a town lacking ‘charm’ but ‘a necessary evil for northern itineraries’

Lonely Planet, the world famous and largest travel guide on the planet, started by Tony and Maureen Wheeler more than 40 years ago, has just published an entry simply called “Introducing Thompson,” which can be found at: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/canada/manitoba/thompson, and the result isn’t pretty. Lonely Planet is famous in its own words for telling travelers what a place is like “without fear or favor … we never compromise our opinions for commercial gain.”

Along with Fodor’s and Frommer’s, Lonely Planet is one of the more respected and widely quoted travel guides in the world in what is a fairly crowded field.

What Toronto-based MoneySense magazine did to Thompson last month through its selection of metrics, ranking Thompson 177th out of 209 cities in its best-to-worst places to live in Canada annual survey, released nationally June 1, Lonely Planet did this month in a few brief words.

The Thompson entry begins, “Carved out of the boreal forest by mining interests in the 1950s, Thompson is a necessary evil for northern itineraries. There’s no way around it, the town lacks charm although the boom in minerals means that it has 24-hour fast-food chains, a Wal-Mart and plenty of services.”

It goes onto note, “Thompson is the end of paved roads, and many people catch the lethargic VIA Rail Churchill train from here. The station, in an industrial area 1 km from town, is not a safe spot to leave your vehicle.”

Frankly, while it’s hardly flattering, having lived in Thompson for more than eight years, I find no substantive quibble with it. Which is why I was amused by a Facebook comment in response to a question, perhaps rhetorical, perhaps not, asking, “A hot tourist destination?” where another commenter responded, “Believe it or not we are. Maybe it’s time we look around and see what others see. There are more positives than negatives.”

OK then. Did we read the same article? “Look around and see what others see?” Didn’t Lonely Planet just describe Thompson, Manitoba as a “necessary evil for northern itineraries” and lacking in charm, where it is unsafe to park your vehicle by the train station while travelling to Churchill, although McCreedy Campground  and the Heritage North Museum (“in a small log-cabin stuffed with stuffed local wildlife and history. It has tourist info”) fared marginally better.

If it’s any consolation, Lonely Planet also had some unflattering things to say about places in Ontario like Wawa, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie and North Bay.

“Let’s face it, Sault Ste-Marie is not the prettiest town. In many parts, it’s dreary. Downtown feels like a ghost town and can be sketchy after dark,” that review says.

Or Wawa:  “In the middle of nowhere, enduring winters straight out of a Siberian nightmare, little Wawa is a tough bird.”

As for North Bay, it “bills itself as ‘just north enough to be perfect,’ which begs the question: Perfect for what? It’s just north enough to make visiting Torontonians feel like adventurers, and the lakeshore is lovely, but other parts of town have seen better days.”

In an e-mail statement to CBC News, Lonely Planet said, “If our coverage promotes tourist boards to lift their game a little and improve services in a town and inspire their businesses to lift their game, then I think we’re doing a great job.”

Sudbury fares a bit better in its review, getting some credit for “making something out of nothing  … locals have planted over 12 million trees since 1980, although heavy industry and mining still rule. Sudbury has a university, two fantastic science museums, some cool haunts and chilled locals, but there’s little reason to visit unless you’re passing through.”

Also found in the Lonely Planet entry for Thompson is the somewhat understated, “Centrally located, Interior Inn is typical of the raw-edged motels that abound in town.” Raw-edged motels? I imagine there’s a Jeff Mcinnes column waiting to be written on that.

But the problem is less in Lonely Planet’s descriptors for Thompson, I think, than the fact is that every time this kind of piece appears, or is recycled on Facebook or other social media, it typically triggers three stages of collective local response: Ignore it and hope it goes away (it doesn’t, people everywhere read this stuff about Thompson, as they do other places written about in travel guides and best-of-guides … surprise!); followed by trying to spin the unspinnable into a positive, which lacks all credibility; and then when strategy one and two fail, shoot the messenger (if it’s a Toronto or Melbourne, Australia-based publication, even better).

Every spring for the last 10 years, Toronto-based MoneySense magazine has published a closely watched annual survey, which ranks cities across the country from best to worst places to live in Canada – both overall and in specific categories. In this year’s survey, Thompson tumbled in its worst-ever finish to 177th place from 121st place last year out of 209 cities ranked in 2015 in the annual MoneySense snapshot of Canada. Thompson’s previous lowest placing in the survey was in 2013 when it finished 164th out of 200 cities ranked.

Do rankings or reviews like Lonely Planet and MoneySense really matter? Yes and no, but less so than the foolishness of lashing out reactively against them, burying one’s head in the sand and going into denial about them or just wishing it wasn’t so.

Former Mayor Tim Johnston, in commenting for annual MoneySense rankings stories on Thompson, used to say somewhat philosophically “it is what it is.” While the then mayor was interested in seeing the annual survey results, one got the impression he wasn’t losing any sleep over whether Thompson was up or down in a given year.

Me, I’m OK with how reviews like Lonely Planet or surveys like MoneySense play out, and feel no need to sugarcoat them or spin them – or go into denial about them.  After all, metrics are not everything. I was fishing on the dock again at Paint Lake yesterday at sunset on a pleasant mid-July evening, while enjoying a Popeye’s burger and fries. On the way home, I saw the first wolf I have seen from the bush here, near Ospwagan Lake, crossing Highway 6 from west-to-east just after 9 p.m.

Metrics are not synonymous with quality of life necessarily.

But a bookstore would be nice. But home is also where the heart is.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Hometowns shape us

While my hometown of Oshawa is a lot bigger (and for that matter older) than Thompson, it was in many ways, at least as I recall it from growing up there, a lot like Thompson in being a working-class blue-collar town.

The men in my Nipigon Street neighbourhood – guys like Earl Kirkpatrick, Snow Willson and my dad – were often working six days a weeks, with overtime on Saturdays when they were on day shift. If they were on nights, they’d be busy flooding the Nipigon Park outdoor rink at 2:30 a.m. – after their eight-hour night shift ended and they went to bed – so us kids could skate the next day. That’s how I remember my dad.

Instead of going to Inco and down into a mine or working at the surface in a refinery or smelter, the men (and they were invariably men back then) I knew in the 1960s carried their metal lunch pails into the factory at General Motors to build cars and trucks. When they were leaving at the end of their shift, they punched the same clock they had coming in.

I spent the first of five summers as a university student, beginning in 1976, working in that very same West Plant in the high-seniority Completely Knocked Down (CKD) department my dad had retired from the year before. Some of his buddies were still there; some I had heard about for years and met for the first time.

My first job was hammering large wooden crates together. It was just an amazing cavernous building that old West Plant with great big windows and wooden floors. I remember once going across the tunnel (or bridge, I’m not sure now how it was referred to) connecting the West Plant and the North Plant over Division Street. Later that summer, I hung rads in the rad room of the old North Plant across the street.

Being blue collar or working class, as Oshawa has shown, doesn’t mean not valuing your heritage and recording your history. It means building on your history. The Canadian Automotive Museum was created in Oshawa in 1961. The city at various times has been known by mottoes that include “The City that Motovates Canada” and “The City in Motion” and, most recently, the “Automotive Capital of Canada”(sorry, Windsor.)

Are the mottoes a bit cheesy? Sure, something like extra old white cheddar, to some tastes.

But history isn’t just for Adlai Stevenson eggheads.

History and heritage is for anybody and everybody, whether it be Oshawa or Thompson. When I need to know something about Thompson’s history, and I quite often do, I’m likely to turn initially to Wayne Hall, Volker Beckmann or Steve Ashton – all very different characters – but a trio who have been here almost forever and have in common a willingness, indeed an interest, in passing on their historical knowledge to all of us who just care enough to ask.

Or I might head over to Thompson Public Library to yet again borrow Graham Buckingham’s 1988 book, Thompson: A City and its People, or Hugh Fraser’s, A Journey North: The Great Thompson Nickel Discovery, from 1985. As well, Heritage North Museum’s website at http://www.heritagenorthmuseum.ca/ with its “Community Memories” section includes a wealth of Thompson history. Want to know more about Dr. Blain Johnston; Jim Heis; Bill and Wilma Harrison; Ed and Elsie Davis; Bill Laing; Don and Louise Johnson; Axel and Doreen Lindquist; Faye Hansen; Garfield Gillis; Harry Lamontagne, Ken Bigalow; Lovey McTavish; Mike Rutherford; Norm Rayner; Paul Zurrin; Red and Mary Sangster; Vivian Clarke; Steve Ogrodnic, Bob and Vicki Fleming; Tom Hicks; Lucy Zimola or Otto Bindle? Its right there, no further way than reaching for my keyboard.