• 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 »