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

You can still find the town of Sellwood on Google Maps. It’s not much of a map though, with one long street and a small marker off to the right, in the middle of a patch of nothingness. The site itself isn’t all that different.

About 20 km from Capreol, on a long, potholed road, there’s a sign marking the Moose Mountain Mine site, which, if all goes well, may one day host a ferrochrome production facility for Cliffs Natural Resources.

Other than some construction work (workers are grinding rocks into gravel), the site is a rocky wasteland, filled with ponds that probably started off as open pit mines and orange-tinted rocks that hint at iron deposits.

But in the early 1900s, Sellwood was a town of promise. “Sellwood was going to be the iron ore capital of the world,” said Stu Thomas, president of the board of directors of the Northern Ontario Railroad Museum in Capreol. Read the rest of this entry »

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum and a local author.

A few news items from 1947 for your reading pleasure. For all the art lovers out there, Miss Helen Chisholm of the national art gallery came home to spend Christmas at her residence, 8 Maple St. S.

According to the news item “Timmins is proud to be the home town of Miss Chisholm, who has made quite a name for herself in the field of art … This past summer, Miss Chisholm was one of a group of artists who enjoyed a series of classes at Banff, Alberta, that scenic resort in the Canadian Rockies. The classes were in charge of A.Y. Jackson (a member of the Group of Seven). We anticipate still greater achievements from Miss Chisholm, another of Timmins’ offspring who aspire to a brilliant future.”

For those of you who think that nothing happened in Timmins, here is your gruesome story of the day. It appears that the body of a local trapper was found frozen in the Mattagami River. Read the rest of this entry »

http://ca.reuters.com/
 
KIRKLAND LAKE, Ontario (Reuters) – With a gleam in his eyes, Sidney Hamden recalls the glory days of Kirkland Lake, the little Canadian mining town in northern Ontario that was long ago dubbed “The Mile of Gold”.

Hamden, a spry 82-year-old, remembers his first big break in 1947 at the Lake Shore mine, then one of the deepest gold mines in the world, producing 8.5 million ounces between 1918 and 1965.

“We had seven mines. I personally don’t know of any other place that had seven major mines within a radius of two miles,” said Hamden. “If I’m not mistaken, in 1948 there were approximately 50 different places to buy groceries around town. We had 17 different hotels in the Kirkland Lake area alone.” But Kirkland Lake’s fortunes waned through the 1950s and 1960s, as costs rose and the price of gold stagnated. Read the rest of this entry »

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

A man takes his wife on a cruise around the world. A month later, she discovers his mistress on board and gets revenge on her husband the best way she can think of — by beating him and giving him a black eye.

The man in question was Ernie Martin, a prospector who came to Canada from England hoping to strike it rich. Ernie, who was worth $13 million in 1936, is rarely mentioned in history books and his story has never been told. Until now.

Brian Martin, a London Free Press journalist and author, penned Ernie’s Gold: A Prospect Tale, a book about the o r’s prospector’s life and how he made his money. He was in Sudbury on Wednesday for two public events at the Mackenzie Street branch of the Greater Sudbury Public Library.

“Ernie’s Gold is a story about Ernie Martin, who is my great uncle, my grandfather’s brother. Read the rest of this entry »

This column was originally published in the Late Summer, 2011 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.

When northerners are not talking about the weather, they complain about the sorry state of many of the highways in Northern Ontario. They look with envy at the first-class highways and byways in the south and talk bitterly about Highway 17 being a death trap and think Highway 144 between Sudbury and Timmins should have a sign saying: “Drive at your own risk and only in daylight. Large trucks, moose and bears have the right of way.”

Still, the North does have a few highways that are no longer part way between cow paths and obstacle courses and residents do manage to get about.

It was not always so and the story of the Yonge Street extension that became today’s Highway 11 could be the history of any major traffic route in the North. While the money for highways came from the south, northerners built their own roads, prisoners, farmers and bush workers between seasons, the poor and those on the welfare rolls. Read the rest of this entry »

The Daily Press, the city of Timmins newspaper.

Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum and a local author.

HISTORY: Social activities also made big news in the Porcupine Camp

Out and about in the Porcupine in 1915 – here are a few items (OK, some serious, some gossip) that made the papers that year. Front page news for June of that year included the exciting announcement that the mill at Schumacher Mines was to be completed by July, and that they were very quickly sinking another 200 feet at the mine (they had already sank 300 feet).

Fifty men were working underground with another 14 on the surface, but it was predicted that many more men could look forward to steady employment at the site.

Not to be outdone, Pike Lake Gold Mines in Deloro Township, run out of New York City, was actively exploiting their six claims. A bunkhouse, kitchen, blacksmith’s shop and office were built. Twenty men were hired to sink the initial shaft by hand and to build the road into the property, located about four miles south of South Porcupine. Read the rest of this entry »

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

COCHRANE, Ont. — Sandra Cattarello, 71, is resting against a fallen tree perhaps sheared by the single-engine floatplane — now scattered before her eyes — which carried her cousin 60 years ago.

It is a well-deserved rest. She just completed a challenging two-hour trek through more than a kilometre of deep muskeg and thick spruce forest in cold wind and rain.

Cattarello came to the middle of remote bush 80 km north of Cochrane on a once-in-a-lifetime excursion with 15 others. She has just finished leading the group in prayer, honouring the two men who died here in 1951.

The first family member to ever visit the crash site, tears roll down her cheek as she speaks of the pain her family endured with the tragic loss of her cousin, Bill Barilko. 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 Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

For the web’s largest database of articles on the Ring of Fire mining camp, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

“The Ring of Fire railroad should be subsidized by
governments as the huge economic impact will benefit
the economy for decades to come, help balance budgets
and alleviate aboriginal poverty in the surrounding
First Nations communities.” (Stan Sudol)

Notwithstanding the recent correction in commodity prices, near-record highs for gold, silver and a host of base metals essential for industry confirm that the commodity “supercycle” is back and with a vengeance.

China, India, Brazil and many other developing economies are continuing their rapid pace of growth. In 2010, China overtook Japan to become the world’s second largest economy and surpassed the United States to become the biggest producer of cars.

In March, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney remarked: “Commodity markets are in the midst of a supercycle. . . . Rapid urbanization underpins this growth. . . . Even though history teaches that all booms are finite, this one could go on for some time.”

Quebec’s visionary 25-year “Plan Nord” will see billions invested in northern resource development and infrastructure to take advantage of the tsunami in global metal demand and generate much needed revenue for government programs.

In Ontario, the isolated Ring of Fire mining camp in the James Bay lowlands is one of the most exciting and possibly the richest new Canadian mineral discovery in more than a generation. It has been compared with both the Sudbury Basin and the Abitibi Greenstone belt that includes Timmins, Kirkland Lake, Noranda and Val d’Or. Read the rest of this entry »

This column was originally published in the Late Summer, 2011 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.

The City of Timmins is celebrating its 100th anniversary by spreading events over the four most important years in its development, 1909-12. While it is true that men made the important mineral finds that became mines and then the economic backbone of the area, they were not alone.

The role of women in the settlement, development and growth of the various communities that today make up the city has been ignored for most of the100 years. It is a forgotten chapter, actually many chapters, of local history.

A few residents find it shocking, even disgraceful, that little attention has been paid over the decades to the contributions of women. Very few. And they are not vocal. There are two reasons why women are forgotten when talk turns to pioneers: Men usually write the histories; and people and events get lost under the pressure of living today and worrying about tomorrow.

Does anyone today recognize the name of Miss Laura Keon? She was a hero, one who should be held up as an example to every school child in Timmins. Instead she is forgotten. In November of 1918, the Spanish Flu began its two-year deadly sweep around the world, killing between 20 and 40 million people. In Canada, 50,000 lost their lives. When it struck this area, Miss Keon was one of the first volunteers to tend to the ill by entering the packed boarding houses and hotels where the mainly single miners and bush workers lived. Read the rest of this entry »

Wawatay News, published by Wawatay Native Communications Society since 1974, is an Aboriginal newspaper serving Northern Ontario.

“This is a story built upon happy memories, a story of hardship and struggle. It is a true account of a Metis woman’s life. The material for this article was collected through my many years of knowing her and listening to her wisdom. This is the story of my grandmother Josephine Cone.” (Joanne Wetalainen)

Mail-order ballet lessons, travelling the Northwestern Ontario waters by right with two young children and guiding groups of prospectors through the wilderness in sub-zero temperatures are all treasured memories of seventy-year old Josephine Cone.

Born in May 1913 in Dinorwic, Ontario, to an Italian father and an Objiway mother, Josephine has a wealth of life’s experience to share with those willing to listen. She doesn’t call herself an “Ojibway” nor does she call herself a “Metis” but readily admits it was her mother who was the driving force in her upbringing.

After only a few years of marriage, her father became tri-lingual; speaking not only native Italian and English but learning to speak fluently in Objiway. “He could speak better Indian than some of the Indians in Dinorwic could,” Josephine recalls affectionately. 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 »

The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada, primarily in the Greater Toronto Area and Ontario. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

The Tech-Hughes ore conveyor used to pass over the road into town proudly bearing the slogan, “Welcome To Kirkland Lake – On The Mile of Gold.”

The conveyor and the mine are gone now, along with the Lake Shore Mine, Wright-Hargreaves, Sylvanite, Toburn, Tough-Oaks, and most of the gold. Hard times have come to this once-flourishing mining town 600 km north of Toronto. Recently, the town has been reduced to promoting a plan that would see millions of tones of Toronto garbage dumped into an abandoned mine pit. The old-timers would weep.

They were a feisty lot with a common contempt for things southern. Toronto-bashing was endemic. There was Harry Oaks, who arrived broke after prospecting around the world, struck gold, and brought in the Lake Shore Mine which made him the richest man in Canada. As Sir Harry, the most taxed, he moved on to the Bahamas, where he was spectacularly murdered in 1943. Read the rest of this entry »

Sudbury-born Kenneth Hayes currently teaches  architectural history at the University of Toronto.

This essay was commissioned by the Musagetes Foundation on the occasion of the Musagetes Sudbury Cafe. It appears in the book Sudbury: Life in a Northern Town / Sudbury: au nord de notre vie.

Musagetes is a private foundation based in Guelph, Ontario which seeks to transform contemporary life by working with artists, cultural mediators, public intellectuals and other partners to develop new approaches to building community and culture.

Kenneth Hayes – Be Not Afraid of Greatness or Sudbury: A Cosmic Accident (Part 2 of 2)

Sudbury’s development displays some of these features in their later, more advanced forms. The “I” in Inco’s name proclaimed the venture international, but the dominant company in the exploitation of Sudbury’s ore reserves was essentially American. Inco may nominally have been based in Toronto, but Canada’s role in this relationship was at best that of junior partner in a kind of corporate suzerainty.

Falconbridge, the newer and smaller corporation in Sudbury, generally enjoyed a better reputation than Inco, but it was not that different. In fact, the rivalry between Inco and Falconbridge over the course of the twentieth century often had the unreal air of a duopoly — the minimum diversity required to maintain the appearance of open competition while colluding for the same ends. (11)  In the last decade, Inco and Falconbridge were purchased, respectively, by the giant mining corporations Vale, from Brazil, and Xstrata, from Switzerland. This situation is still regarded (not without some degree of xenophobia) as abnormal, but the truth is that Sudbury has never really ruled itself.

Understandably, diversification has been Sudbury’s cultural and economic mandate in recent decades. Fuelled by the North’s long-standing regionalist grievances, the city went through a phase of public investment that resulted in the creation of the Taxation Data Centre, Science North and improved health-care and educational facilities, but there are now signs that vigorous private initiative is rising from the thrall of the mines, and doing so in Sudbury’s own inimitable way. Read the rest of this entry »