The Star Weekly, which ceased publication in 1973, was the weekend supplement to the Toronto Star.

The real silent service is not the Royal Navy; it is the Canadian nickel industry. While Labrador, Chibougamau, Kitmat and Alberta have been reveling in the white light of publicity, the Sudbury basin of Ontario has gone quietly about he business of building up the most gigantic mining enterprise in Canada and the biggest of its kind in the world.

It is hard to avoid talking in superlatives when the people of Sudbury boast, quite truthfully, that no civilized man in the Western world passes a day of his life without using in some form or other a product of their rocky environs.

They will tell you, and the dominion bureau of statistics confirms it, that Sudbury workers are the highest paid in Canada, earning an average of $66.05 a week, compared with and average of $54.47 in Toronto and $50.75 in Montreal.

They boast, and the department of labour agrees, that they are the most unionized area in Canada, and that their local 598 of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers is twice as big and twice as rich as any other in Canada. Read the rest of this entry »

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The 1960s were a period of tension and turmoil in Sudbury, with huge changes in local labour organizations. It was also a period of massive urban renewal and municipal restructuring.

When the decade opened, the entire mining industry workforce was represented by one union — the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. When the decade ended, the United Steelworkers Union had established itself as bargaining agent for Inco employees in Sudbury.

To mark its presence in the community, the union purchased the former Legion Hall at Frood Road and College Street. The building became the Steelworkers Hall.

It was also a time of increasing demand for nickel products throughout the world, helped in no small part by the war in Vietnam. Both of the community’s mining companies, Inco and Falconbridge, were expanding operations. Read the rest of this entry »

This column was originally published in the Fall, 1996 issue of Highgrader Magazine which is committed to serve the interests of northerners by bringing the issues, concerns and culture of the north to the world through the writings and art of award-winning journalists as well as talented freelance artists, writers and photographers.

On November 8, 1963, a young Canadian geologist named Ken Darke set up a diamond drill 16 miles north of the Town of Timmins. The hole was logged as Kidd 55-1 and when the core came up there was a foot of solid copper in it. On July 16, 1996, Frank Pickard, then 62, president and CEO of Falconbridge Ltd. told a gathering of Timmins civic and political leaders he hoped Kidd Creek Mine would be here “thirty years from now. I won’t be here, but the mine could be.”

In between these two dates is the story of a unique orebody, one so rich it staggers the imagination.

Kidd Creek Mine has been in production since 1966. It has processed 106.5 million tones grading 6.55% zinc, 2.31% copper, .24% lead and 94 grams silver per tonne. In addition, there is an estimated 32.2 million tones of ore in the proven, probable and possible reserves for a grand total of 138.7 million tones of base metals. By comparison, the 1994 copper-nickel-cobalt discovery at Voisey’s Bay in Labrador is presently estimated to contain just over 100 million tonnes.

The Kidd Creek Mine literally saved the town and improved the lot of every miners in the area. Read the rest of this entry »

This article was provided by the Ontario Mining Association (OMA), an organization that was established in 1920 to represent the mining industry of the province.

The Ontario Mining Association has helped 27 Ontario teachers gain a better perspective on the mineral industry through its participation in the second annual Teachers’ Mining Tour.  This educational professional development program was held at the Canadian Ecology Centre (CEC) near Mattawa from August 15 to 19, 2011. 

The program exposed teachers to all phases of the mining cycle, industry professions, Earth science and mineral education specialists, Earth science presentations, educational resources and numerous field trips.  George Flumerfelt, President of North Bay-based mine contractor Redpath and an OMA Director, provided a “Mining 101″ presentation for the educators to kick off the intensive week.

Tours included visits to Vale’s smelter complex in Sudbury and Xstrata Nickel’s Nickel Rim South Mine.  In North Bay, the teachers toured Boart Longyear’s drill manufacturing facilities including a highly automated operation featuring robotics.  Also, a representative of consulting engineering firm Knight Piesold made a presentation on the role of environmental assessments in resource development to this group of teachers.  Read the rest of this entry »

For a large selection of corporate histories click: International Directory of Company Histories

Company History:

Noranda Inc. is one of the largest mining and metals companies in the world with operations in 18 countries. Production of copper and nickel accounts for the majority of Noranda’s revenues–the company also mines aluminum, zinc, and precious metals. Noranda restructured in the late 1990s by selling off its forest products and oil and gas businesses in order to focus on its core metals and mining assets.

Origins and Development: 1920s-50s

The history of Noranda begins with the story of a prospector named Edmund Horne, and a hunch. During the early 1920s, at a time when northern Canada was unchartered–the area was mostly wilderness, and prospectors preferred to stay on the familiar grounds of Ontario–Horne was drawn to the Rouyn district in northeastern Quebec. He visited Rouyn repeatedly, because he believed it “didn’t seem sensible that all the good geology should quit at the Ontario border!” Horne could reach Rouyn only by way of a chain of lakes and rivers.

His enthusiasm was contagious, and soon a group of 12 men had raised C$225 to finance further explorations. The effort paid off when word of Horne’s first strike made it to S.C. Thomson and H.W. Chadbourne, two United States mining engineers with a syndicate of investors interested in exploring Canadian mines. In February 1922, the syndicate bought an option on Horne’s mining claims in Ontario and Quebec and exercised it. Noranda Mines Ltd. was incorporated in 1922 to acquire the U.S. syndicate’s mining claims. Read the rest of this entry »

For a large selection of corporate histories click: International Directory of Company Histories

Company History:

Falconbridge Limited is a leading base metals mining company operating out of Toronto, Canada. Its primary commodity is nickel, which is instrumental in the manufacture of stainless steel, followed by copper, cobalt, and platinum group metals. Falconbridge owns nickel mines in Canada and the Dominican Republic, and ever since 1930 has maintained a refinery in Norway. The company is majority owned by Noranda, a Canadian natural resources company that controls more than 50 percent of its stock. Falconbridge shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Founding of Falconbridge: 1928

Falconbridge took its name from the township of Falconbridge, Ontario, an area possessing large deposits of nickel. In 1928, businessman Thayer Lindsley paid $2.5 million for mining claims in the area and created Falconbridge Nickel Mines Limited. The new company took immediate steps to work the claims, and despite the stock market crash of 1929 it was able to sink a shaft and begin to develop the mine, as well as build a smelter. Falconbridge still had to refine the ore, however, and the International Nickel Company of Canada (INCO) retained the North American rights to refining technologies. Read the rest of this entry »

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 the cover story of the Saturday, November 25, 2006 edition of the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business Section. Jacquie McNish’s 16,000-word article on the failed Inco/Falconbridge merger has become the definitive account of this Canadian business tragedy.

THE GREAT CANADIAN MINING DISASTER

Scott Hand had a dream, to keep Inco Ltd. in Canadian hands. But he didn’t count on corporate betrayal, political apathy, a new bread of shareholders, and a lack of boardroom bravado

Introduction

The horizon clears

Inco sees its future

After days of murky weather, a wool fog lifted off central Labrador, revealing the bald rugged terrain explorer Jacques Cartier dismissed as “the land God gave to Cain.” The momentary clearing allowed a clutch of travellers to dash to two turbo props marooned at Happy Valley Goose Bay airport.

These were no ordinary tourists. Leading the parka-clad pack was Scott Hand, patrician chief executive officer of the world’s second-largest nickel producer, Inco Ltd. Behind him, eager to explore Cain, were an elite corps of international executives. Rick Waugh, CEO of Bank of Nova Scotia, a man who is gobbling up more Latin American banks than Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, was here. So was David O’Brien, chairman of EnCana Corp. and Royal Bank of Canada. Joining them were Glen Barton, retired chief of Illinois’ Caterpillar Inc.; John Mayberry, onetime CEO of Hamilton steel maker Dofasco Inc.; and Francis Mer, retired boss of European steel maker Arcelor SA and a former finance minister of France. Inco directors one and all, they scrambled to the Dash 8s under an uncertain sky to see for themselves the 21st century’s first great mining startup: Voisey’s Bay.

Mr. Hand, however, wanted his directors to see more than a prosperous mine on the afternoon of Sept. 20, 2005. Although Inco was still digesting the $4-billion, 1996 purchase of Voisey’s Bay, he believed it was time to deal again. Rival Falconbridge Ltd. was in play, presenting Inco with an opportunity to forge a global powerhouse by bringing some of the world’s richest copper and nickel deposits under one corporate entity. Read the rest of this entry »

Maclean’s Magazine – August 15, 1951

Lindsley is a rare combination of the four “musts” of mine-making success.

The first “must,” and Lindsley’s greatest asset, is his phenomenal insight into problems of geology and vein structure.

Second, he has an uncanny sense of economics and financing.

Third, Lindsley, though self-effacing in his personal life, is a striking contrast as a businessmen. He is willing to gamble hard and boldly with million-dollar stakes and long odds.

And fourth, he can work hard, physically and mentally, with a power of concentration so keen that he is amusingly absent-minded at times regarding matters outside his business affairs in which he has no interest.

Knack for Rock Jigsaws

Lindsley’s ability to work out complex problems of geological structure and decide whether a property is a potential mine or just another “teaser” has become a legend in Canadian mining circles. But he has made mistakes. For example, he pulled out of Red Lake, Ontario, in its early days because he was convinced the area had no promise, then had to watch with embarrassment as it developed into one of Canada’s richest gold camps.

Read the rest of this entry »

A shy, elderly and virtually anonymous man named Thayer Lindsley personally controls a fabulous international kingdom of gold, silver, copper, zinc and iron. With a genius for geology and finance he has made millions but he has never got around to buying a car.

Maclean’s Magazine – August 15, 1951

The financial pages of Canadian newspapers in the past few months have heralded the discovery of new high-grade ore at Giant Yellowknife, Canada’s lusty gold-producing youngster of the Northwest Territories; they have announced that United Keno, the Yukon’s big silver-lead-zinc producer, chalked up a two-and-a-half-million-dollar profit in 1950; that Falconbridge Nickel of Sudbury and its expanding overseas refinery in Norway will spend millions of dollars to boost output for defense; the “big two” of Canadian mining exploration, Ventures Ltd. and Frobisher Ltd. are pushing the search for titanium in Quebec, uranium in northern Saskatchewan, iron in British Columbia.

Mining editors have headlined a proposed thirty-three-million-dollar project to develop a fabulous copper-cobalt property in Uganda; they have announced that an American firm will reopen ancient silver mines in Greece; that Latin America’s biggest gold mine, the La Luz of Nicaragua, has acquired substantial interests in a Californian tungsten mine, and in promising mining properties of the Philippines, Costa Rica, Honduras and the state of Nevada.

There have been reports too of an exciting iron discovery in the western Sahara, of a Venezuelan move to expropriate the Guyana gold mine, and of mounting production from Southern Rhodesia’s Connemara gold mine.

It is almost inconceivable, yet every one of these enterprises is directed and financially controlled by one person, a reclusive mystery man whose genius for evading the limelight is exceeded only by his genius for geology and mining finance. He is Thayer Lindsley, undisputed No. 1 figure in Canadian mining, who carved out Canada’s biggest mineral empire and then went on to create another international empire just as great.

Read the rest of this entry »

This profile came from the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame. The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame honours the mine finders and developers who helped develop our northern and rural regions and created enormous wealth for the country. For more exciting profiles on the individual who made Canada a global mining powerhouse, go to: http://www.halloffame.mining.ca/halloffame/

Thayer Lindsley, the father of such mining giants as Falconbridge Ltd., Ventures Ltd. and Frobisher, has been described as the greatest mine finder of all time.

Not only did he found Falconbridge, a multinational organization ranked now among the largest mining companies in the world, but throughout his long and extraordinarily dedicated career, Lindsley either found or was involved in the development of such other famous Canadian mining names as Sherritt Gordon, Giant Yellowknife, Canadian Malartic, United Keno Hill, Lake Dufault and Opemiska Copper, Connemara in Southern Rhodesia and Whim Creek in Australia.

His geological and creative genius touched the fortunes of perhaps more than 185 companies in all.

In a book on exploration he published in 1966, he aptly described the kind of attributes that made he himself a giant among mining men: “To be a successful mine finder,” he said, “one must have determination, knowledge, tenacity, a rugged constitution to withstand the rigors of outdoor life, and enjoy overcoming obstacles of every description. Also, a little dash of imagination and enthusiasm is helpful.”

Read the rest of this entry »