• Thank you, and good afternoon everyone. It’s been a little while since I spoke to the Chamber, so it’s a pleasure to be here.

• Actually it’s been almost a year to the day since Murilo Ferreira, Vale Inco’s President and CEO, first came to Sudbury to speak to this audience. This was shortly after CVRD completed its acquisition of Inco.

• The theme of his speech was “Together, We are Better” – and I’m sure some of you may have been skeptical.

• He also said the acquisition wouldn’t change things much in Sudbury…but I might argue – since then, things have changed…and for the better.

• What an incredible year we just had at our Sudbury operations: Read the rest of this entry »

Fred Stanford is President, Ontario Operations at Vale Inco

Stanford joined Vale Inco’s Industrial Engineering Department in 1981 upon graduation from the Technical University of Nova Scotia. In 1985, he moved into operating supervision roles in various mines, advancing to the position of Creighton Mine Superintendent in 1991. 

In 1996, he moved to Clarabelle Mill as Superintendent before a transfer to the Manitoba Division as Manager of Human Resources, Safety & Environment.  In 2002, he returned to the Ontario Operations as Manager of Maintenance, General Engineering and Support Services. 

Stanford was appointed Vice-President of Business Services in July 2005.  In January 2007, he was appointed President of Vale Inco’s Ontario Operations. He is active in the community and currently sits as a Director on a number of Boards including Cambrian College, NORCAT and the Laurentian University Board of Governors.

The next posting is a speech given by Stanford to the Sudbury Chamber of Commerce on January 31, 2008.

Reminiscences of pioneers are often the more difficult of sources to uncover. In some cases the pioneer was never interviewed. Often people were too busy surviving in what had to have been a trying time. However, Thomas Frood, one of Sudbury’s early history-makers, did have a few of his views committed to paper at the turn of the century. The account is an important one for not only the views expressed but also what they reveal about the author.

Thomas Frood was born in Renfrew in 1843. For the early years of his life, he lived in southern Ontario as a druggist in Southampton, and later as a teacher in Kincardine. Read the rest of this entry »

Gary Peck is a retired school teacher living in Sudbury, Canada. During the late 1970s, he researched and wrote a very popular local column on the history of the Sudbury Basin. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find his wonderful stories.

To ensure that the digital generation has access to Sudbury’s vibrant and colourful past – the historic heart of the global nickel industry – Peck has given the Republic of Mining permission to post his columns.

When railway contractors found traces or ore along the tracks at mile 101 north of North Bay in 1903, they did not know what they had. Fred LaRose said it was some kind of damn metal. But what? They needed a rock doctor to figure it out.

In modern day Cobalt, just around the corner from the Lang Street hotel, on a dead end, there is a monument to the man who ‘read the story of the rocks’. Few people have heard the story of the moonlighting geologist it remembers, but without him, well, let’s just say Cobalt would have been a lot slower to develop. Read the rest of this entry »

Busy People

Well, if Sam Ritchie will settle for that kind of monument, there it is. It’s the only kind there is at the moment, for the guys who owe their jobs to Sam Ritchie’s stubbornness haven’t got around to anything else. We wondered about this and asked Dan Dunbar, Inco public relations man, why not.

“I guess they just haven’t had time. This is the participatingest community on the face of the earth. Everybody is always up to something, usually three or four things at the same time.”

Actually, instead of one community at Copper Cliff, there are as many communities as there are mines. Each settlement has its community hall and in the winter the lights in the halls are seldom out. The outdoor skating rinks are jammed with small fry. Teams from the district have an excellent record in national competition and each mine has its hockey team, bowling team, badminton team and baseball team. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MiHR), is undertaking a National Occupational Standards Project which will provide detailed essential skills profiles, core competencies and occupational standards for workers in underground mining, surface mining, and minerals processing.  

The Mining Companies and its stakeholders are moving forward together at unprecedented levels of collaboration in order to address the skilled workforce shortages.  In 2008 we will see national standards start to emerge.  Greater marketing and branding activities for mining as a high tech, dynamic industry will be launched. Read the rest of this entry »

This brave New World of ours may be bringing the world-order architects down with the jitters, but no one is going to convince Mr. and Mrs. Job Public that it doesn’t have the gaudiest surface glitter they have ever seen.

Never before have so many automobiles been loaded down so heavily with so much nickel plating. The stores are filling up with nickel-plated tasters and electrical goods, nickel-plated furniture, nickel-plated utensils and fishing rods and gadgets of infinite assortment and complexity. And in tune with the glistening motif of the times, the merchandisers are lifting the faces of their store fronts and prettying them up with nickel plate, aluminum and chromium.

That’s just the first verse. Under the hood of your new car, in the works of your new radio, in the kitchen of your restaurant and under he concrete floor of your cellar, in airplanes and plows, in power plants and in nail files, in skyscrapers and in dental bridgework, there is more nickel hidden away than you can shake a stick at. Read the rest of this entry »

The Canadian mining industry is growing, mainly due to the expansion of the global economy.  This global expansion, however, is placing increased pressure on mining companies to recruit workers from around the world.  

The 2005 report of the Mining Industry Training and Adjustment Council (MITAC) identified the need for over 80,000 workers in the mining industry over the next 20 years.  That number has now risen to 92,000.

The industry doesn’t operate in a human resources vacuum.  Foreign mining companies are aggressively recruiting Canadian workers at a much greater rate than the global recruitment activity of Canadian companies. And in addition there are skills shortages throughout Canada not just in mining, but also in petroleum, electricity, construction, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

Sylvia Barnard is President of Cambrian College which is located in Sudbury, Canada. The college has an enrolment of over 4,400 full-time students and approximately 8,000 part-time personal, professional and human resources development courses and seminars.

Cambrian College offers Mining, Geology, and Civil Engineering diploma programs as well as apprenticeship and skilled trades training, graduating over 1,000 students annually for entry into the mining industry. Cambrian College has also been providing research for the mining industry for about 40 years. There is a very close, cohesive relationship between this institution and the local mining sector. Read the rest of this entry »