Yellow Brick Roads to Gold Rock

Richard G. Kuhn is an associate professor of geography at the University
of Guelph.

The quest for the riches and promise of gold has long allured
prospectors and dreamers. This is the story of Gold Rock, a mining
community located in the Manitou Lakes region of western Ontario (or, as
noted in the book “twenty-seven miles south of Wabigoon which is
fourteen miles east of Dryden which is ninety miles east of Kenora”).

Hazel Fulford’s quaint history evokes a fine sense of time and place
in her account of the Manitou region from the late 19th century to the
present. Her abundant use of archival photographs, newspaper clippings,
and interviews with Wabigoon residents helps to document the optimism,
but more often disappointing failings of exploration and mining
endeavors. Her story encompasses the trials and tribulations experienced
by so many resource communities across the country.

Yellow Brick Roads to Gold Rock will generally appeal to residents and
historians in the region, as well as to the many tourists who visit its
lodges and fishing camps. The research is thorough and the prose
engaging. A fine book indeed.