Rubble where once there were homes. Ruts where once there were roads. Forests where once there were fields. What became of those intrepid homesteaders who chased their dreams to northern Ontario and struggled to break the sod of the Great Canadian Claybelt? And what of the merchants, railroaders, timber barons, developers and labourers who chose Hearst in its primitive condition – no running water, no sewage disposal, no electricity, no police, log hospital, makeshift churches, rudimentary school? These stories, told by the people who lived them and their descendants, are an intimate window to the expectations and disappointments of families who crossed oceans and continents to buy into the myth that “New Ontario” was destined to become the next Canadian breadbasket. Enticed by cheap land after World War I and the Great Depression, their Herculean efforts were no match for the forces opposing them – winters too cold, summers too wet, markets too distant, governments too indifferent. One by one they sold their only cash crop, the trees·on their farms, and either drifted away or moved into Hearst. Here they locked arms with the townsfolk and together built the institutions that would provide their children with the key to a better future – churches, hospital, schools. Through their combined efforts a dynamic, egalitarian community was born. The riveting historical vignettes chronicled in this book are centred on Hearst but the stories they tell could be from any one of dozens of communities across northern Ontario.