The following is from the National Film Board of Canada Press Kit

THE FILM

“Don’t know much about mines? Not many people do. Mines don’t talk. Especially about their history.” Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie explore this history in their latest documentary, The Hole Story. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada, the film continues in the same provocative vein as their earlier Forest Alert.

The history of mining in Canada is the story of astronomical profits made with utter disregard for the environment and human health. It’s also a corrupt and sometimes sinister story. For example, during the First World War, nickel from Sudbury was sold to the German army to make the bullets that ended up killing soldiers from Sudbury in the Battle of Vimy Ridge. In Cobalt, a town in Ontario that once had no garbage collection, people were dying of typhoid.

Meanwhile, the first Canadian mining magnates were growing filthy rich selling silver to England from the 40 mines surrounding the town.

Timmins has its own shameful mining story. In the woods,50 kilometres west of the railroad, prospectors quickly staked their claims before heading to the government office to register their hectares and take ownership of the subsoil. 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

Ontario Mining Association President Chris Hodgson will be the keynote speaker at the Mining Ready Summit: Preparing Aboriginal Communities for Mining-Related Business Opportunities in Timmins. This event is being hosted by Nishnawbe Aski Development Fund on October 25 and 26, 2011 at the Days Inn Conference Centre. 

The summit is expected to attract more than 150 key mineral sector people, contractors, mine supply and service company representatives, Aboriginal business owners and First Nations community leaders. The goal of the gathering is to help prepare Aboriginal communities for mining related business opportunities. It is hoped participants will bring new knowledge, lessons learned and best practices to the summit and communicate effectively with participants.

Mr. Hodgson is the keynote speaker at the dinner on October 25. He will share the OMA’s vision for the future of mining in Ontario. Global economic forces such as urbanization and the continued developmental paths of nations such as China and India are providing this province with a window of opportunity to meet a lengthy anticipated period of high demand for commodities Ontario can produce.  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 »

http://thechronicleherald.ca/

Paul W. Bennett is founding director, Schoolhouse Consulting, Halifax, and the author of Vanishing Schools, Threatened Communities: The Contested Schoolhouse in Maritime Canada, 1850-2010.

Dusty old memoirs rarely attract much attention, unless they celebrate the lives of famous figures or capture well the social experience of bygone days. Men and women living ordinary lives rarely write autobiographies and fewer still have the resources to get them published.

The rather obscure Cape Breton-born mining pioneer Aeneas (Angus) McCharles (1844-1906) was an exception to the normal pattern. His personal memoir, Bemocked of Destiny, published posthumously in 1908, achieved some notoriety for its homespun philosophy and has been re-published recently as a centenary project.

McCharles’s fascinating life caught the imagination of Martin McAllister, an amateur historian and former columnist for the Inco Triangle, the official newsletter of the International Nickel Company in Sudbury, Ont. While researching the mining pioneers of Sudbury District some years ago, he stumbled upon McCharles and his long out-of-print memoir. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Please note: Voisey’s Bay nickel reserves have subsequently been proven to be much, much less than the legendary Sudbury Basin. Furthermore, the commitment to mining robotics was significantly reduced and Voisey’s Bay did not start commercial production until 2005. – Stan Sudol

Voisey’s Bay raises the question

A student who wants to graduate with a mining engineering degree from Sudbury’s Laurentian University must be able to sit in a room and pilot a miniature truck with a television camera strapped to it along the university’s corridors.

Some believe Sudbury’s ultimate fate rests on this skill.

Sudbury has reigned for a century as the nickel capital of the world. Even today, despite new mines that have opened around the globe, the Sudbury basin and its 17 mines account for about 11 per cent of the world’s total nickel supply. And there are an estimated 30 to 80 years of reserves left, depending on what new ore bodies are discovered.

But every year, the miners must delve deeper to get at the ore, making that ore ever more expensive. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Company History:

Inco Limited is one of the world’s top producers of nickel. It operates Canada’s largest mining and processing operation in Sudbury, Ontario, and runs other mines in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Indonesia. It has interests in refineries in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, and sales and operations in over 40 countries worldwide. Overall Inco provides about 25 percent of the nickel used globally. The company also produces cobalt, copper, precious metals, and specialty nickel products.

Early Years

Nickel was first isolated as an element in the middle of the 18th century, but not until the following century did it come into demand as a coin metal. Up to around 1890, coining remained the metal’s only use, and most of the world’s nickel was mined by Le Nickel, a Rothschild company, on the island of New Caledonia. At that time, however, it was determined that steel made from an iron-nickel alloy could be rolled into exceptionally hard plates, called armor plate, for warships, tanks, and other military vehicles, and the resulting surge in demand spurred a worldwide search for nickel deposits.

The world’s largest nickel deposit ever discovered was in Ontario’s Sudbury Basin; before long, one of the area’s big copper mining companies, Canadian Copper, began shipping quantities of nickel to a U.S. refinery in Bayonne, New Jersey, the Orford Copper Company. Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Mills owns no shares of any companies mentioned in this report and none are advertisers on his site www.aheadoftheherd.com

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information

In 1946, in New York City, the Anti-Trust Division of the Department of Justice filed a complaint against Inco and its wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, International Nickel Co. Inc.

Canada’s Inco, at the time, owned 90% of the world’s nickel ore and supplied 90% of U.S. nickel needs.

The charges brought were:

■Conspiracy to prevent competition in the nickel industry
■Fixing prices
■Making cartel agreements with I. G. Farbenindustrie, A. G. and two French companies to prevent competition and peg prices in the world market

The Department of Justice said the nickel industry ceased to be competitive earlier in the century when Charles Schwab arranged a merger between Canadian companies with nickel ore and U.S. companies with the chemical process for separating nickel from copper. Holdings of this combine were consolidated under Inco, Ltd. in 1928.

How ironic that in 2010 the US did not have any active nickel mines. Nickel has a very interesting history and is still extremely important in the everyday functioning of our modern economies. Read the rest of this entry »

Kim Morris won third place in the 2011 Arthur W. Page Society and Institute for Public Relations case study competition – business school category.

Her case study entry was on the Vale Sudbury year long strike – A War of Words or a War of Worlds: Brazilian Vale versus North American USWA.  She  is a senior adviser of communications and public affairs at the North East Community Care Access Centre.

Final Case Study

Abstract

In July 2009, USWA Local 6500, the union representing the employees of Vale’s Sudbury operations went on strike. This was to become the longest and most acrimonious strike in Sudbury mining history. Both sides in the dispute were responsible for less than flattering behavior, including leaking of documents, bullying, making racist comments, and even criminal activity. The final result of this strike is a community that has lost respect for both organizations.

This case study offers an opportunity to study how actions taken during a strike impact on the reputation of both parties. It also highlights the communication breakdown between not only both parties but also with their key stakeholders.

Overview

“We are very happy with the results of the ratification vote. The agreement establishes a newworking relationship with our employees and the union and allows us to move forward with our long-term, sustainable growth plans. We look forward to returning to normal production andbuilding the future together with employees.”

Tito Martins, Vale’s Executive Director for Base Metals
Vale news release, July 9, 2010 [1] Read the rest of this entry »

The principal author, Dr. Sam Marcuson ( Sam.Marcuson@valeinco.com ) is vice-president, business improvement for Vale Inco Limited, Mississauga, ON, Canada. This article was adapted from a plenary speech made at the CIM Conference of Metallurgists held August 2009 in Sudbury, Ontario. The full paper is available from the author or the conference proceedings.

Looking at the industry’s past and present with a view to projecting into the future can be a valuable exercise for executing and maintaining sustainable development

The first eight years of this century saw rapid growth in the consumption and production of nickel and related commodities. In response to growth in the BRIC countries, but especially China, new projects, many in under-developed countries, were initiated. Nickel pig iron, produced in aging Chinese blast furnaces, unexpectedly emerged. Simultaneously, scientists concluded that global warming is “unequivocal” and human activity is the main driver, “very likely” (>90%) causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950[1]. These factors point to a future in which sustainable development becomes of paramount interest to the mining and metallurgy industry.

To the practicing metallurgist and operator, “sustainability” may appear as keeping employees safe, meeting prevailing environmental regulations and contributing to social programs contractually agreed to, while maintaining a low-cost operation that meets production and financial targets. But this is a highly simplified view that ignores many of the sustainability concepts. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Arrogance of Inco” was originally published as the cover story in the May, 1979 issue of Canadian Business. Reporter Val Ross, who died in 2008, spent two and a half months researching and writing this lengthy expose of the then Inco Limited. It has become a “classic must read” for anyone wishing to understand the often bitter history between Sudbury and the company that defined the Canadian mining industry.

4-Troubles in the Province of Ontario

Nineteen hundred and fifteen was a rather wet year in the Sudbury district. The sulphur dioxide fumes from the open-air roasting heaps hung in sickening mists and low clouds over the region. In increasing numbers the local farmers brought damage suits against the nickel producers, Mond and International Nickel. In desperation the nickel companies turned to the Ontario Ministry of Lands, Forests and Mines for protection. They begged the government to remember nickel’s contribution to the defence of the Empire (this was the year before the Deutschland’s two trips to pick up nickel supplies for Germany).

Charging opportunism, they protested, “Lands are being taken up and a pretence of farming made…in the hope and the expectation that the same may be damaged or appear to be damaged so that a claim against the company may be made.”

The Ontario government agreed with the nickel men’s interpretation of events and dealt with the “smoke farmers,” as Inco dubbed the victims, accordingly. Whole townships near Copper Cliff and Sudbury were withdrawn from sale to settlers. When the remaining lots changed hands, “smoke easement clauses” were written in which denied the buyers the right to sue mining companies. These clauses, reviewed in 1942 during another spate of farmers’ and residents’ complaints, have been retained. To this day, no owner of Sudbury real estate has the right to sue mining companies for property damage.

There were, and remain, variants on the sulphur dioxide pollution problems in the Sudbury area. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Arrogance of Inco” was originally published as the cover story in the May, 1979 issue of Canadian Business. Reporter Val Ross, who died in 2008, spent two and a half months researching and writing this lengthy expose of the then Inco Limited. It has become a “classic must read” for anyone wishing to understand the often bitter history between Sudbury and the company that defined the Canadian mining industry.

3-Foreign Wars, Foreign Conquests

World War One boosted International Nickel up fortune’s wheel. The demands of World War Two and the Cold War arms race would put the company over the top – and heading down.

In the second half of the century Inco reaped the consequences of what it had sowed in the first the demand it had created for nickel ultimately exceeded its capacity to produce it – and left a vacuum for new producers to fill. Its booming good health attracted envy from customers, who might, had Inco been less arrogant, have felt more loyalty to the company when the chips were down; and it also attracted the critical attention of governments, consumer groups and environmentalists.

No one foresaw this, of course. The company’s chairman and president during World War Two, Robert Crooks Stanley, the man who’d spent four decades of his life convincing the world of nickel’s place in civilian life, made the necessary adjustments to war in a spirit of confident responsibility. “The first obligation of every corporation,” he noted serenely, “is to give the utmost support to his [sic] government in the prosecution of the war.” He plowed $38.5 million of the company’s money into boosting production by 20% and expanding the Huntington rolling mill facilities. Just as in World War One, the company nearly doubled its nickel output. But to do so it sacrificed costs, efficiency and profits, which dropped from $37 million in 1939 to $25 million in 1945.

Meanwhile, Stanley’s friend and fellow board member, John Foster Dulles, was creating a niche for himself in the postwar world. Dulles chaired the corporate heavyweight Committee for a Just and Durable Peace sponsored by the National Council of Churches of Christ in America; advised the American delegation at the United Nations conference, and made more and more friends with the Republican party establishment. It must have seemed to the board of directors that the company’s postwar position would surely be enhanced by friends with such political power.

They were wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Arrogance of Inco” was originally published as the cover story in the May, 1979 issue of Canadian Business. Reporter Val Ross, who died in 2008, spent two and a half months researching and writing this lengthy expose of the then Inco Limited. It has become a “classic must read” for anyone wishing to understand the often bitter history between Sudbury and the company that defined the Canadian mining industry.

2-The Monopoly Years

Whether the 20th century would belong to Canada, as Laurier had promised, was anybody’s guess, but it was clear from the start that it would have a place for the nickel from Canada.

No one was under the illusion that its control wasn’t solidly in American hands. The International Nickel Company’s chief executives were American, its refining operations were located in America, and so were its marketing policymakers.

When, in 1890, US Navy tests demonstrated that nickel-steel plate was impervious to shells fired at a velocity of 1,700 feet per second, the Glasgow Herald prophesized the dawn of a new age. “When irresistible nickel-plated breach loader confronts the impenetrable nickel-plated ironclad [vehicle], then…war as a fine art will have come to an end.”

On the contrary, nickel flourished in war-making and war-making flourished with the help of nickel. The Spanish-American War of 1898 demonstrated the invincibility of US nickel-steel-plated ships. Soon nickel was almost entirely a military material. Demand for it quickened in the dreadnought-building races between the Great Powers. Then, in 1914, the guns of war sounded, and nickel boomed. Between 1914 and 1918, the output of the Sudbury area mines more than doubled.

How awkward when it was learned in the middle of the war that some of this product was destined for German guns!

Read the rest of this entry »

“The Arrogance of Inco” was originally published as the cover story in the May, 1979 issue of Canadian Business. Reporter Val Ross, who died in 2008, spent two and a half months researching and writing this lengthy expose of the then Inco Limited. It has become a “classic must read” for anyone wishing to understand the often bitter history between Sudbury and the company that defined the Canadian mining industry.

A century of power and profit – and now a sea of troubles

NICKEL, INCO. Clack the consonants of these two words on your tongue, and they sound similar. They used to be synonymous – nickel, Inco – in the public mind undoubtedly, in the company’s mind, indelibly.

The International nickel Co. (it was renamed Inco Ltd. In 1976) was in up to its elbows at the birth of the nickel industry, almost as responsible for nickel’s development as nickel was responsible for making Inco Ltd. the billion-dollar multinational empire it is today. Inco was nickel. And the company men and the metal left their characteristic mark on each other’s fate.

The metal, element 28, is greyish-white. You might describe the company’s subdued, Anglo-Saxon character in the same way. Among the metal’s most important properties are resistance to oxidization and corrosion, and insolubility in water. Alone, nickel us brittle, but it merges promiscuously with iron and other metals into a host of tough alloys. The company is tough too, resistant to change, at times rigid. And the men of Inco have forged some odd business and political alliances to increase their company’s strength and lustre.

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 »

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 March 26, 2010 edition of the Globe and Mail’s monthly Report on Business magazine.

Down the road from the Copper Cliff smelter, where the Inco Superstack reaches 380 metres into a clear winter sky, striking Steelworkers stamp their heavy boots and feed a smoking fire pit with scrap wood. Massive ore trucks, engines growling, wait for permission to drive through the picket line. It is a familiar ritual; after 10 or 15 minutes, the picket captain signals the drivers to proceed and go about their business at the smelter—their business being strikebreaking.

When Local 6500 of the United Steelworkers walked off the job at the Vale Inco nickel mines, it was mid-July. The progression from agreeable summer weather to minus 20 C has been brutal. The best to be said about minus 20 is that it’s better than minus 30, just like strike pay of $200 a week is better than no pay at all. It’s hardly surprising that there’s little of the bravado that usually sustains picket lines.

The downbeat atmosphere may also reflect a sense among the strikers that the world has changed and that their strike has not been noticed by Canadians. There have been many strikes in Inco’s history—but every other one was decided in Canada. Now Inco is a subsidiary of a company based far away.

If the long stalemate in Sudbury had a sound, it might be that of the other shoe falling. When the takeover binge of the mid-2000s saw many of Canada’s pre-eminent companies disappear into foreign hands, the debate over the “hollowing out” of the domestic economy was muted. After all, Vale, like other acquisitors, made undertakings to preserve jobs and, in fact, to carry on much like before.

Now, it appears, things look very different to Vale.

Read the rest of this entry »