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Flin Flon could figure prominently into an ambitious proposal to open the floodgates to northern Canadian development in the coming decades.The Northern Corridor is envisioned as a coast-to-coast transportation route featuring some 7,000 km of highway, railway and other infrastructure across the northern portion of the country.
The corridor is only an idea at this stage, but a preliminary map shows the passageway would pass right by Flin Flon – potentially spurring significant growth.“There’s certainly a potential that it could become one of the hub cities on [the route],” said Kent Fellows, a professor with the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and a researcher of the proposal.
“One of the next phases of our research is to look where population centres are already, where resources are located and try to figure out, what are the main areas that we can hit? So Flin Flon is definitely on the radar from that perspective.” It’s difficult for Fellows or anyone else to speculate about what impact the corridor could have on Flin Flon and other communities along the route.
That would depend on whether the passageway succeeds in spurring the resource sector and, as a bonus, lowering a cost of living that many northern Canadians find difficult
to bear.
Fellows draws the possible parallel of the CN main rail line. He says his home city of Calgary didn’t have a post office until the line arrived and went from “essentially nothing” to its current status.
“So when we talk about cities or towns that would be on or near that [Northern Corridor], you can imagine that there would probably be some considerable induced growth for a number of different of reasons,”
he said.
For the rest of this article: http://www.thereminder.ca/news/local-news/research-opens-door-to-potential-northern-transport-corridor-1.23060909