Northern Life, Greater Sudbury’s community newspaper, gave Republic of Mining.com permission to post this article. www.northernlife.ca (Originally published on September 16, 2008)

Taken with permission from Garson Mine: 100 Years of Mining Excellence, authored by Hans Brasch

1907 – Garson Mine came into existence, purchased by the Mond Nickel Company. Development work began on a vertical shaft, six by 14 feet. The shaft was sunk to a depth of 225 feet and opened up at the 100- and 200-foot levels. Workforce average (WA) - 100.

1910 – No. 1 shaft was deepened to 600 feet. Production – 70,004 tonnes of ore. WA – 250.

1914 – No. 1 shaft was sunk to 870 feet. The miners dry-house was enlarged and several other buildings were built during the year. Production – 123,143 tonnes of ore. WA – 420.

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Thomas A. Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, focusing on legal issues. Mr. Bowden is a former lawyer and law school instructor who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland. The Ayn Rand Center is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand–author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Venezuela, Russia, and other countries that nationalize natural resources are violating private property rights.

For years, the Canadian operator of a huge Venezuelan gold project known as Las Cristinas has been seeking an environmental permit to start digging. Well, Crystallex International Corporation can stop waiting–the mine is being nationalized as part of dictator Hugo Chavez’s long-running program of socialist takeovers. “This mine will be seized and managed by a state administration” with help from the Russians, said Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz.

It’s not surprising that a brute like Chavez would want to grab the 16.9 million ounces of gold estimated to lie buried in the Las Cristinas reserve. But what’s more puzzling is why–when gold mines, oil rigs and refineries worth billions of dollars are nationalized by regimes such as Venezuela and Russia–the ousted companies can muster no moral indignation, only tight-lipped damage appraisal.

The reason, in a nutshell, is that resources like gold and petroleum in their natural state are universally regarded as public property that cannot be extracted by private companies except with government permission, revocable at will. “Venezuela will not accept that foreign organizations tell them what to do with their own resources,” said a local journalist recently.

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We wheeled the car out of Cooper Street and south along the Driveway, beside the Rideau Canal, past the carefully tended flower gardens of the National Capital Commission, past the even-more-carefully tended bureaucrats, marching memo-laden back to work after the lunch break, past couples disporting themselves on the greenward, and young mothers rolling their kids out for sunshine and compliments, past, in a word, the mixed panorama of central Ottawa on a summer’s day. My wife said: “Let’s not go.” A foolish fancy, but alluring. We were leaving Ottawa after 12 years, and heading for Washington. We had lived here for eight years, and spent a week out of every month here for four years, and not it was over, and I said: “Ah, hell.”

I was surprised at myself. Canada’s capital has always been a national joke. Transport Minister Jean Marchand’s line that “The nicest thing about Ottawa is the train to Montreal” has become an unofficial city motto, and bitching about the place – its lack of class, good restaurants, sense of history and all the neat things you find in Washington and London and Paris – has become a pastime not only for its citizens but for Canadians everywhere.

Well, nuts to them. Ottawa is not only a superior city, it may even be a model from which other cities can learn. It makes the best of a modest setting – as opposed to, say, Vancouver, which makes the worst of a magnificent setting, or Sudbury, which squats in its glum background like a whore in a hovel – and it has all the amenities most people require.

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Northern Life, Greater Sudbury’s community newspaper, gave Republic of Mining.com permission to post Janet Gibson’s article. www.northernlife.ca

JGIBSON@NORTHERNLIFE.CA

Four groups have joined forces to form a world-class mining research centre on the fourth floor of the Willet Green Miller Centre at Laurentian University.

Late last month, staff from CEMI, MASHA, CAMIRO and MIRARCO explained their acronyms and described their projects to more than 100 invited guests from the university, mining companies, city and provincial government.

“Our biggest challenge is to make this work for those who invest,” said the CEO of CEMI, Dr. Peter Kaiser, noting his organization has received $50 million in the last five years, half of which is being devoted to problems associated with deep mining.

Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI):

Some projects Kaiser and his staff are working on this year are mining footwall and offset deposits, reducing the risks of deep mining and restoring peatlands and uplands in the Hudson Bay lowlands.

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(Following from Feb/27/2008 City of Greater Sudbury News Release)

In March 2006, the City of Greater Sudbury set up a ten-member Advisory Panel on Municipal Mining Revenues chaired by former Inco vice-president José Blanco. The resulting 64-page report, released in February, 2008, called on Council to, ‘invite the Province of Ontario to enter into negotiations with the city to establish a resource revenue-sharing framework that will ensure a predictable and sustainable revenue stream for the municipality.”

The panel notes that in 1970, major mining companies accounted for about a quarter of local property taxes. By 2005, the mining companies’ share of municipal property tax levies had fallen to just 6.5 per cent.

‘This is a very complex, multi-layered story in which there are no bad guys,” said panel chair José Blanco. Read the rest of this entry »

On behalf of the members of the Advisory Panel on Municipal Mining Revenues, I am pleased to present our report.

The Panel that you and your Council convened to prepare this report includes a diversity of perspectives drawn from the panelists’ experiences in business, politics, community services, labour, education and the mining industry. It has been a privilege to work with these dedicated citizens.

As the work of the Panel progressed, ably supported by the resource team you provided, the diversity of experiences merged into a consensus that a new framework for balancing the costs and the benefits that the mining industry creates within our Municipality is essential. These issues need to be urgently addressed for the City of Greater Sudbury to achieve its potential.

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The Sudbury Basin is arguably the most valuable geologic structure in the world. For more than one hundred years, dozens of mines have operated around the rim of this ancient meteor crater, extracting millions of pounds of nickel, copper and cobalt as well as million of ounces of gold, platinum and palladium.

The sales of these metals have realized tens of billions of dollars in profit for mining companies and billions of dollars in taxes for the Federal and Provincial Governments. The mining activities in the Sudbury Basin have in large measure driven the development of the progressive urban center that is the City of Greater Sudbury.

Local municipal government in the Sudbury area has gradually grown to match the geographic extent of the basin. As dictated by the Ontario government in 1973 and again in 2001, the disparate assembly of communities that had developed around the mine sites has been consolidated into Ontario’s largest municipality, covering a staggering 3,200 square kilometers. Read the rest of this entry »

Australia is considered the third largest minerals producer in the world, larger than Canada. The value of minerals exports (including oil and gas) is forecast to reach A$116 billion in 2007-08. As a result, Australian mining, supply and service companies and expertise are in demand around the world. In fact 60% of global mines use software designed and produced in Australia.

Both, the enormous iron ore deposits in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and the vast bauxite reserves at Weipa in the state of Queensland are among the top ten most significant mining regions in the world. The mineral deposits at Mount Isa, Kalgoorlie, Kambalda and Bowen Basin, just to mention a few regions are all world class.

Australia is the world’s leading producer of bauxite and alumina, number two in gold, iron ore, uranium, lead, zinc, number three in nickel and silver, and the fourth biggest black coal supplier. This is by no means a complete list.

Like Canada, Australia has experienced many gold rushes and other mineral booms in the past century and a half, that helped open up unexplored parts of their vast interior, increase immigration as well as contributed to the country’s economic development.

As well-known Australian journalist Trevor Sykes once stated about his country’s mining history, “…a saga of tough men, iron-nerved gamblers, violence, death and glittering riches set against the backdrop of some of the most awful country on earth.”

Noted Australian history professor Geoffrey Blainey, who wrote the much acclaimed, “The Rush That Never Ended – A History of Australian Mining” stated in his book, “Australian prospectors found or pioneered new mining fields from the Rand to Rhodesia to New Zealand and the Klondike. Australian mining investors opened Malayan tinlands and New Guinea and Fiji goldfields, and there is hardly a mining field that has not used Australian innovations in metallurgy.”

The Australian Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame has graciously given Toronto-based Republic of Mining.com permission to post individual profiles from their digital archives of some of the most famous Australians who have made major contributions to their mineral industry.

Opened in 2001 and located in the Western Australian city of Kalgoorlie, the site of one of the country’s most famous gold rushes, the Australian Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame tourist attraction offers many exhibits that colorfully explain mining history as well as current industry practices. You can go 36 metres underground with a retired miner and see how mining was done at the turn of the last century with picks and shovels and wheelbarrows.

You can also watch a gold pour demonstration in the original 1920s Paringa Mine Gold Room or try gold panning in ponds on the property. Other galleries showcase a mineral collection, explain mining laws and regulations and environmental issues. The facility also has a major education outreach program.

The following website has more information on the Miners Hall of Fame as well as extensive archives profiling the men and women who made Australia such a global mining powerhouse: http://www.mininghall.com/Home.php

Susan Ioannou of Toronto first became interested in geology as a theme while her son was completing a PhD. Exploring the science of rocks and minerals from a poet’s perspective was a fascinating and refreshing change from writing personal lyrics. Ioannou’s fiction, articles, and poetry have appeared across Canada. Winner of the 1997 Okanagan Short Story Award and twice a finalist in the CBC Literary Awards, in 2002/2003 she received an Ontario Arts Council Works in Progress grant to complete Looking Through Stone.

 The following book review was done by Adge Covell.

“Enough iron to make a nail, potassium for….” well, you probably know most of the rest. It’s one of the favourite quotes to be found in those “Did you Know?” lists which are everywhere these days, and which describes the cocktail of elements which make up the human body.

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