Michael Barnes is the author of more than fifty books about characters, communities, mining, and police work. He is a Member of the Order of Canada and makes his home in Haliburton, Ontario, Canada. While living in Northern Ontario most of his life, he has come to know and admire those who make their living in the mining industry.
To order a copy of “Fortunes Found – Canadian Mining Success” go to: General Store Publishing House
Stan Sudol with his blog “The Republic of Mining.com” does the industry a great service by bringing out topical and historical articles. (Michael Barnes – Fortunes Found: Canadian Mining Success – 2010)
In 2006, the City of Greater Sudbury Development Corporation enlisted the support and input of various community, business, and labour groups to form a task force on the future of the local mining industry. When the group came to put its conclusions into print form, it turned to a local son now resident in Toronto.
Stan Sudol is a writer and consults on mining issues. Since he has written extensively on Sudbury mining and the nickel industry, he was chosen to author “Claiming Our Stake — Building a Sustainable Community.”
The paper has become Sudbury’s policy core regarding the mining industry. With a century of experience in mining, the city is a most welcome place for all aspects of the industry. The major companies, all levels of government, and the various communities must support moves in the area of training, innovation and research, and reclamation.
The Sudbury Basin has seen over many years the drop of a workforce from 30,000 to 6,000, and such job losses cannot sustain a major city. The area has another hundred years of mining nickel, a metallic version of oil, which is vital to world manufacturing. The city must establish a good relationship with Vale Inco and Xstrata and promote itself as the mining capital of Canada.
Many of the proposals in the lengthy document are being pursued and are coming to fruition. In early 2009, Sudol wrote an article that built on “Claiming Our Stake” and received much attention in mining circles.
Posted on his blog, “The Republic of Mining,” the writer declared in the article that the province should establish Laurentian University as the Harvard of the mining sector. He urges a concentration of the province’s mining education in one location. The looming shortage of
professional geoscientists requires action. Laurentian’s mission statement declares its aim to become the Canadian centre of expertise in the geosciences and mining innovation. The research cluster of organizations should be reinforced.
Sudol recognizes inevitable resistance to this consolidation move by the mining faculties of the universities of Toronto and Queens but argues that the resulting benefits to the Canadian mining sector make such a movement eminently worthwhile.