This article was originally published in Northern Ontario Business in the June, 2010 issue. Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

Ontario Northland Could Play a Role in the James Bay Rail Link

The first tentative steps toward building an ore haul railway to the James Bay lowlands began this past winter. Helicopters moved drills into place as geologists tested frozen riverbanks north of Nakina taking core samples to determine where bridges can be built to haul ore from a chromite open pit in the Far North’s ‘Ring of Fire’ exploration camp.

Building a railroad through the Canadian Shield and into vast boggy plain of the lowlands will be a huge and complex feat of engineering and construction. The railway engineers have already begun studying the footing and economics of how to move millions of tonnes of chromite out of McFaulds Lake in time for mining operations to begin by 2016.

About $100 million will be spent by KWG Resources and their mining partners in environmental and other consulting studies before any approval for mining is ever given.

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This article was orginally published in Northern Ontario Business in the June, 2010 issue. Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investers with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North.

The man who once wanted a separate province for Northern Ontario straps on his political boxing gloves again

Unrest over the province’s handling of the North’s natural resources is rousing an old political hand back into action, as North Bay’s Edward Deibel attempts to revive the long-dormant Northern Ontario Heritage Party (NOHP).

Though he never secured a single seat, Deibel’s first efforts to push the NOHP in the late 1970s received such attention that the province responded by creating the Ministry of Northern Affairs, or what is now known as the Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry.

Time, experience, and a lack of popular support have changed Deibel’s approach from when he first walked away from the party 30 years ago, however.

The idea of creating a Northern Ontario province, the NOHP’s dominant goal in its heyday, has since changed to simply represent the region’s interests by having 11 NOHP MPPs elected to Queen’s Park.

“This is the formula, and all Northerners have to wake up and say that this has to happen,” says Deibel.

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

This article was originally published by Globe and Mail Columnist Roy MacGregor on Friday, September 12, 2003

BIRCH LAKE, ONT. — ‘Maybe I should change my boots,” the owner of Black Bear Lodge says as the reporter hauls a camera out of the trunk of his car.  ”I got blood on them — wouldn’t want anyone calling me a murderer, would I?”

It has happened before. A few years ago, Bob Lowe was invited to his daughter Sandra’s high school in Sudbury to explain what he does for a living.  When he arrived, hand-painted signs were taped to the walls.

“Killer.”

“Murderer.”

For the past dozen years, Bob and Vicki Lowe have run a hunting and fishing operation 15 kilometres up a twisting logging road from the tiny village of Webbwood.  Until four years ago, their life was quiet, unnoticed and modestly profitable, right up until the Ontario government banned the spring bear hunt.

And nothing, absolutely nothing, defines the difference between Northern and Southern Ontario better than the spring bear hunt.

This mammoth province, in fact, can be split by the French and Mattawa Rivers, one running west into Lake Huron, the other east to the Ottawa River.  They serve as a watery Mason-Dixon line to cut the north off from the south, both physically and psychologically.

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Honourable Michael Gravelle – Ontario Minister of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

Thank you, Steve [Steve Wood, Vale / OMA Director] and good day, everyone.
 
I am very pleased to address members and guests of the Ontario Mining Association this afternoon. It’s a pleasure to be back in North Bay, and to enjoy your hospitality.
 
First let me give my heartiest congratulations to Chris Hodgson and his staff on OMA’s milestone 90th anniversary.

I’m very proud of the longstanding positive working relationship between the Ontario Mining Association and my ministry.

We share a passionate for working collaboratively to build on the strengths of mining for the good of all Ontarians.

That collaboration is also reflected in the OMA’s own positive relationships with First Nations and Métis communities, the supplies and services sector, and mining-sector stakeholders overall.

And my Ministry appreciates your valuable input to our government’s initiatives and programs.

The last decade has been record breaking for Ontario, with one of the best mining cycles in our history. By the same token, the industry has also had a couple of very tough years.

But there are signs of recovery, progress and opportunity: Read the rest of this entry »

On June 14, I had the pleasure of being invited onto TVO’s flagship current affairs program, The Agenda, for a one-on-one interview with host Steve Paikin.

The topic headline was: The Interview: Stan Sudol: Will the Strike Ever End?

It’s been almost one year since Vale workers went on strike in Sudbury, Port Colbourne and Voisey’s Bay NL. Northern Life columnist Stan Sudol will be here to tell us if there is any light at the end of the tunnel.

As the station’s website states, “TVO is Ontario’s public educational media organization and a trusted source of interactive educational content that informs, inspires, and stimulates curiosity and thought. TVO’s vision is to empower people to be engaged citizens of Ontario through educational media.” The Agenda has been described as a program that “presents in-depth analysis and intelligent debate on issues of concern in the rapidly changing world around us.” www.tvo.org

The program is archived below:

Photo Courtesy of Otis Williams

Known as the people of the three rivers, the Wiradjuri have inhabited modern-day New South Wales, Australia for at least 40,000 years. At the time of European colonization, there were an estimated 3,000 Wiradjuri living in the region, representing the largest cultural footprint in the state. Their country extends from the Great Dividing Range in the east, and is bordered by the Macquarie, Lachlan and Murrumbidgee rivers. The Wiradjuri were a hunter-gatherer society, made up of small clans or family groups whose movements followed seasonal food gathering and ritual patterns. The decline of the Wiradjuri population in New South Wales was accelerated in the 1820s when indigenous people were forced off their traditional lands by an influx of European settlers. Today, major Wiradjuri populations can be found in the New South Wales towns of Condobolin, Peak Hill, Narrandera and Griffith. (With files from Bathurst Regional Council, New South Wales)

Five years ago, the Wiradjuri community of Condobolin decided to take their future into their own hands. In the words of one Elder, it was to be “a new beginning” for the long marginalized, oft en overlooked indigenous community in the heart of New South Wales, Australia.

 That hope for a better future and “a new beginning” was enshrined as the motto of the Wiradjuri Condobolin Corporation (WCC), an organization that is transforming the lives of local Wiradjuri people, creating new opportunities for the community that were unthinkable just a few years ago.

The WCC was created through a Native Title Agreement between the Wiradjuri people and Barrick, negotiated during the development of the company’s Cowal gold mine. That agreement included provisions and funding to ensure Wiradjuri share in the benefits of mining, empowering them to break the cycle of despair that had gripped their community for years.  Read the rest of this entry »

This article is from the April 2009 issue of Beyond Borders: A Barrick Gold Report on Responsible Mining.

About Porgera Joint Venture, PNG

• Barrick is the operator (95 per cent interest), PNG government and landowners (5 per cent)
• 2, 500 employee and over 500 contractors
• Significant investments in health, education, skills training, infrastructure and local business development
• A partner in the “Restoring Justice Initiative”,  a government community effort to strengthen law and order, which encompasses issues such as violence against women

Women in Papua New Guinea’s Porgera Valley, home to the Porgera Joint Venture mine, are using resources provided by the company to pursue higher education, gain new skills and become financially independent.

Through its assistance programs, the Porgera mine is helping local Porgeran women become respected members and leaders in a society that has traditionally been male-dominated. In 1999, the company funded the establishment of the Porgera District
Women’s Association, a non-governmental organization that now has a membership of more than 2,000 women across 20 wards in PNG. With financial support from the mine, the group is providing local women with training in leadership and management skills, health and education, law and order, micro business and agriculture.

MICRO CREDIT SCHEME

One of the association’s most successful programs is the micro credit scheme project, which loans money to women for small-scale projects that generate income. The program has a very successful 99.9 per cent repayment rate. Since it commenced in 2000, it has enabled 181 women to become self-reliant.

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