[Goldcorp mine restoration] ‘Liquid gold’ a big hit in Shania’s hometown – by Lisa Wright (Toronto Star – July 23, 2011)

Lisa Wright is a business reporter with the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion.

After decades in the mining game, Goldcorp Inc. has finally figured out a way for its worker bees to make “liquid gold.” The enterprising environmental team at the Canadian company’s subsidiary in Timmins has transformed an old mine tailings property into a real hive of activity, where bees make honey amid the tall grass and flowering vegetation that until recently was a barren wasteland.

The Vancouver-based mining giant inherited the mined-out land as part of its purchase of a massive property known as Porcupine Gold Mines (PGM) in the northern Ontario city back in 2006.

The 58 hectares called the Coniaurum (which is Latin for constant gold) was mined for nearly 50 years and then abruptly abandoned in 1961 following a serious storm that breached tailings containment dams and caused discharge problems. Back then the industry was an unregulated wild west where miners would dig in and then just duck out when they were done.

Enter Goldcorp and modern day mining. Coniaurum is one of 20 burnt out mines amid its PGM operations and the first to be renewed as a wildlife habitat and rolling green field — and also an experimental ground on how to resurrect the rest of these eyesores.

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Northern Ontario communities band together to help evacuees – by Carys Mills (Globe and Mail – July 23, 2011)

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.

GREENSTONE, ONT.— In a cramped high-school kitchen on the Ginoogaming First Nation reserve, Krista Taylor fries bacon and toasts bread, making breakfast for close to 100 forest-fire evacuees.

She labours in the kitchen with two other women from the reserve who have worked the eight-hour shift that starts at 7 a.m. Some evacuees are asleep in nearby classrooms and the gym, while a few others chat by the school’s front doors.

Ginoogaming, with an on-reserve population of about 160 people, has stepped up to feed and house evacuees from the Sandy Lake First Nation, where forest fires rage. The community near Greenstone, Ont., about 250 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, opened its doors when more than 1,600 people were flown out of Sandy Lake this week, after the government deemed the level of smoke blowing from nearby fires was too treacherous.

For Ms. Taylor, the choice to help was simple. “I like cooking and it’s good to help these people,” she said, wearing a name tag on her T-shirt reading “cook.” It’s been about a decade since she worked at an evacuation this large in the area.

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