I am an Inco brat. I was born and raised in the shadows of those tall industrial smokestacks that tower over the city of Sudbury, Canada. In the days when I turned 18 in the late 1970s, if you didn’t go to university, then it was almost a rite of passage to work for “Mother Inco,” as it was affectionately (or derisively) known.

For most students today, the prospects of a good-paying summer job to help finance post-secondary education has become an elusive dream. Skyrocketing tuition fees combined with minimum-wage work equals enormous debt at graduation. Read the rest of this entry »

Stan Sudol is a self-described “Inco Brat.” He was born in Sudbury, Canada, the richest mining district in North America and among the top ten most significant globally. Sudol grew up in Sudbury during the 1960s and 1970s, where his father and most of his neighbours worked for Inco Limited (now Vale Inco).

Sudol worked for Inco’s Clarabell Mill for one year during 1976/77 and underground at the the company’s Frood-Stobie mine in the summer of 1980. The hard-rock mining culture of the Sudbury Basin has left a tremendously positive impact on him.

Based in Toronto, Canada, Sudol works as a communications consultant, executive speech writer and policy analyst. He has been writing a mining column for the past four years that currently appears in Sudbury’s Northern Life newspaper. Articles and columns have been published in the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, National Post and regional papers and magazines.

Sudol has been interviewed on CBC Radio, CHML, Radio-Canada and the natural resources television station IDNR-TV. His columns have also been posted on Australian and British websites.

The mining sector is a strategically vital industry, integral for the modern, prosperous lifestyles we are accustomed to in the West and for the hundreds of millions in China, India and other developing countries struggling to raise their standard of living.

Yet I still get the impression that many in the mainstream media, political circles and the general public view mining as a low-tech and polluting industry that is not welcomed in many regions.

I write a column on the mining sector examining corporate and government policies and challenges and have been continually surprised at the amount of misinformation about the industry, especially in newspapers and on television. Read the rest of this entry »