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Books, Art, Music and Photography About Mining and Northern Topics

The Drift: The ‘picturesque ruins’ of Cobalt make their debut at the McMichael gallery – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – September 21, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Upcoming exhibition will showcase new landscape art from Cobalt’s mining history and how it became a gathering place for women painters

The historic northeastern Ontario mining town of Cobalt will be in the spotlight this fall at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, north of Toronto. The exhibition, which runs at the Kleinburg gallery from Nov. 18 to April 21, will display, for the first time, the wave of art that was produced during the 1920s and 1930s from many leading and up-and-coming artists of the time.

The show, entitled Cobalt: a Mining Town and the Canadian Imagination, will feature pieces by A.Y. Jackson, Franklin Carmichael and Lawren Harris of Group of Seven fame, Bess Harris, Yvonne McKague Housser, Isabel McLaughlin, Dr. Frederick Banting, and earlier visiting artists such as John Wesley Cotton and Lady K.S. Robertson.

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OPINION: The Springhill Mine disaster is a cautionary tale the world would do well to remember – by Ken Cuthbertson (Globe and Mail – September 16, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Ken Cuthbertson’s latest book is Blood on the Coal: The True Story of the Great Springhill Mine Disaster.

Mark Twain once quipped, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.” Twain was right about that. The urge to deny inconvenient truths is as widespread as it is timeless. We’ve had yet another vivid reminder of that in our summer of wildfires, droughts and monster storms.

Despite the cacophony of alarm bells warning us that if we continue doing what we’re doing, our addiction to fossil fuels won’t end well for us or for our planet, climate-change skeptics and energy-industry lobbyists insist that, at least for now, there’s no realistic option.

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Front Row Seat: Book explores culture, conflict on Iron Range – by Jay Gabler (Duluth News Tribune – August 17, 2023)

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/

As a sociological research project, Erik Kojola spent four years talking with people on both sides of the copper-nickel mining debate for “Mining the Heartland.”

DULUTH — Erik Kojola’s paternal grandparents have died, but he thinks the Hibbing couple would have been excited to know their grandchild wrote a book about the Iron Range. At the same time, Kojola believes, they would have been “somewhat dismayed to see some of the conflicts that are going on right now.”

Kojola was speaking via video call last week from the Washington D.C. area, where he lives and works as a researcher for Greenpeace. He was raised out east, but his parents are from the Northland and Kojola got to know the area through family visits.

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‘Stampede’ Review: An Attack of ‘Klondicitis’ – by Andrew R. Graybill (Wall Street Journal – April 5, 2021)

The above WNED PBS production premiered in January 2015.

https://www.wsj.com/

The average haul for a Gold Rush prospector was about five dollars. Only a few hundred dug out enough to come home rich.

Brian Castner’s “Stampede: Gold Fever and Disaster in the Klondike” begins in medias res, with the harrowing tale of Robert Henderson, a solitary prospector panning for gold in the Yukon Valley in the spring of 1895. Picking his way over a tree trunk lying across a frigid stream, Henderson fell and skewered his calf on one of the branches.

After freeing himself and reaching shore, he convalesced in a tent for three weeks, leaching pus from his wound with strips of bacon that, when discarded, were devoured by wolves. Although Henderson’s leg healed, his “Klondicitis” never broke; once he could hobble he went right back to his quest, and in June 1896 struck paydirt on a stream he christened Gold Bottom Creek. But his dreams came to naught—Henderson missed out on a far bigger strike nearby and didn’t meet the deadline to file his own claim, which went to another man.

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Cobalt Red: a regressive, deeply flawed account of Congo’s mining industry – by Sarah Katz-Lavigne and Espérant Mwishamali Lukobo (Open Democracy – July 3, 2023)

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/

Billed as an exposé, Cobalt Red simply rehashes old stereotypes and colonial perceptions of the DRC

Cobalt Red: how the blood of the Congo powers our lives, by Siddharth Kara, has been making waves. Released in April and tailored for a non-specialist audience, it has quickly become a New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller, as well as a bestseller in Amazon’s African Politics category.

The book centres on the mineral cobalt, currently sought after the world over for the production of high-end batteries. More than 70% of the world’s supply originates from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Kara’s project, he says, is to expose the trade’s dirty secrets for all of us to see.

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Records and Roots: Breaking down the “Ring of Fire” – by Tom Netherland (Times News – June 2023)

https://www.timesnews.net/

BRISTOL, Tenn. — Johnny Cash was in a rut. By the spring of 1963, Cash had recorded just one top 10 record, his uninspiring 1962 cover of Jimmie Rodgers’ “In the Jailhouse Now,” since 1960’s “Seasons of My Heart.” Furthermore, Cash had not touched down with a No. 1 single since February 1959 with “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.”

Johnny Cash needed a hit. Not only that, his marriage to wife Vivian was crumbling, battles with addiction escalating. Well, this month marks an important anniversary for “Ring of Fire” and Johnny Cash.

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Book tour contributes debate around uranium mining – by Clint Fleury (NWO News Watch – May 17, 2023)

https://www.nwonewswatch.com/

Dr. Warren Bernauer will be touring three locations in northwestern Ontario to promote his new book I Will Live for Both of Us: A History of Colonialism, Uranium Mining, and Inuit Resistance.

WINNIPEG – For those living in Dryden, Ignace and Thunder Bay, Dr. Warren Bernauer will be touring Northwestern Ontario to speak about a book he co-authored with Joan Scottie and Jack Hicks, called I Will Live for Both of Us: A History of Colonialism, Uranium Mining, and Inuit Resistance.

Bernauer, who currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba in the Department of Environment and Geography and the Natural Resources Institute, still calls Northwestern Ontario his home.

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Book excerpt: How the sparks of conflict in Ontario’s Ring of Fire set alight (Northern Miner – April 13, 2023)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Click Here to Order Book: https://amzn.to/3FVk4hK

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 10, “From backrooms to bulldozers,” of Ring of Fire: High Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness, written by Virginia Heffernan and published by ECW Press. This chapter details how a clash between Indigenous rights, Ontario’s Mining Act and hapless politicians sets the stage for conflict in the mineral-rich region.

Dalton McGuinty was Ontario premier in 2007 when the Ring of Fire was discovered. At the time, the courts were starting to consistently side with First Nations across Canada over the right to be consulted about development on their traditional lands. The province was clumsily playing catch-up.

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Ring of Fire book sheds new light on conflict in James Bay Lowlands – by Gary Rinne (SNNewsWatch.com – April 10, 2023)

https://www.snnewswatch.com/

Click Here to Order Book: https://amzn.to/3FVk4hK

Author Virginia Heffernan feels the Ring of Fire can still be a global model of sustainable resource development

The author of a new book about Northwestern Ontario’s Ring of Fire mineral zone believes a way can be found to overcome the obstacles that prevent its development. Virginia Heffernan feels no mine can be constructed without First Nations having a stake in it and unless the necessary measures are taken to protect the delicate environment of the James Bay Lowlands.

But in Ring of Fire – High Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness – the exploration geo-scientist turned mining journalist writes that she doesn’t think sustainable development is necessarily “an oxymoron in this fragile land.”

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Excerpt from Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness – by Virginia Heffernan (April 6, 2023)

Click Here to Order Book: https://amzn.to/3FVk4hK

A valuable discovery under the world’s second-largest temperate wetland and in the traditional lands of the Cree and Ojibway casts light on the growing conflict among resource development, environmental stewardship, and Indigenous rights

When prospectors discovered a gigantic crescent of metal deposits under the James Bay Lowlands of northern Canada in 2007, the find touched off a mining rush, lured a major American company to spend fortunes in the remote swamp, and forced politicians to confront their legal duty to consult Indigenous Peoples about development on their traditional territories. But the multibillion-dollar Ring of Fire was all but abandoned when stakeholders failed to reach a consensus on how to develop the cache despite years of negotiations and hundreds of millions of dollars in spending. Now plans for an all-weather road to connect the region to the highway network are reigniting the fireworks.

In this colorful tale, Virginia Heffernan draws on her bush and newsroom experiences to illustrate the complexities of resource development at a time when Indigenous rights are becoming enshrined globally. Ultimately, Heffernan strikes a hopeful note: the Ring of Fire presents an opportunity for Canada to leave behind centuries of plunder and set the global standard for responsible development of minerals critical to the green energy revolution.

EXCERPT: Ring of Fire – Transformative Changes For First Nations Embracing Mining Development – by Virginia Heffernan

If you journey north from the coastal communities of Moose Factory and Attawapiskat, hugging the curvaceous eastern shoreline of James and then Hudson Bay, you eventually reach the inlet that leads to the hamlet of Baker Lake in Nunavut. It’s the geographic centre of Canada. Baker Lake has been transformed by gold mining over the past decade.

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Excerpt from Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness – by Virginia Heffernan (March 27, 2023)

Click Here to Order Book: https://amzn.to/3FVk4hK

A valuable discovery under the world’s second-largest temperate wetland and in the traditional lands of the Cree and Ojibway casts light on the growing conflict among resource development, environmental stewardship, and Indigenous rights

When prospectors discovered a gigantic crescent of metal deposits under the James Bay Lowlands of northern Canada in 2007, the find touched off a mining rush, lured a major American company to spend fortunes in the remote swamp, and forced politicians to confront their legal duty to consult Indigenous Peoples about development on their traditional territories. But the multibillion-dollar Ring of Fire was all but abandoned when stakeholders failed to reach a consensus on how to develop the cache despite years of negotiations and hundreds of millions of dollars in spending. Now plans for an all-weather road to connect the region to the highway network are reigniting the fireworks.

In this colorful tale, Virginia Heffernan draws on her bush and newsroom experiences to illustrate the complexities of resource development at a time when Indigenous rights are becoming enshrined globally. Ultimately, Heffernan strikes a hopeful note: the Ring of Fire presents an opportunity for Canada to leave behind centuries of plunder and set the global standard for responsible development of minerals critical to the green energy revolution.

EXCERPT: Ring of Fire – Geological Richness on a World-Class Supersize Scale – by Virginia Heffernan

Geologists now speculate that the only way Nemis’s ring could contain so much mantle-derived (or ultramafic) magma and metal is if some cataclysmic geological event, such as two continents colliding or separating, had cracked open the basement rocks….

Now cast your mind back 2.7 billion years. The crust is splitting apart just west of the current imprint of Hudson Bay. The crust is thinner and the core hotter than now, creating a lot of melted mantle with nowhere to go. So as soon as a rift opens up, the restless magma lets loose and ascends….

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The Year That Made and Broke BC – by Crawford Kilian (The Tyee – March 15, 2023)

https://thetyee.ca/

The 1858 gold rush brought sweeping change, and sealed a grim future for Indigenous people.

Gold, Grit, Guns is an extraordinary book that focuses on the lives of four prospectors and their mixed fortunes in the B.C. gold rush of 1858. Their diaries vividly describe the expense and hard work it took just to reach an unclaimed gravel bar, and then to find the flakes and nuggets of gold it might contain. In the process of getting rich, or more likely going broke, they also began the breaking of an ecosystem and an economy thousands of years old.

The year 1858 was a pivotal one for the western regions of British North America: it saw the transformation of “New Caledonia” into the Crown colony of British Columbia (soon to merge with the colony of Vancouver Island).

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A Modern Klondike: Northern Ontario’s fiery ring – by David Marks Shribman (Literary Review of Canada – April 2023)

Literary Review of Canada

To purchase Ring of Fire book: https://www.amazon.ca/Ring-Fire-High-Stakes-Lowlands-Wilderness/dp/1770416749

Consider the major collisions of contemporary life in North America: the tensions between financial investments and social ideals; the threat of climate change in conflict with the thirst for energy sources; the rights of Indigenous people versus the prerogatives of elected governments; the rivalries with trading partners in competition with the hunger for goods from abroad; and the impulses of the regulatory state in full combat with the appeal of free markets.

Then consider that all of these clashes — the stuff of debate in Ottawa and provincial capitals, the topics of animated conversation in universities and coffee shops across the country — are playing out, every one of them and all at once, in a remote 5,000-square-kilometre swath of northern Canada. It’s a place that’s home to the second-largest temperate wetland in the world, that’s packed with nickel and copper, and that’s known as the Ring of Fire.

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Who wants to hear about White Saviourism gone wrong? – by Ben Radley (African Arguments.org – March 8, 2023)

https://africanarguments.org/

A new book on the Congo recycles stereotypes of Africa as a wasteland in need of saving in all its promo. It’s been rapturously received in the West.

Last month, award-winning author and academic Siddharth Kara published Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers our Lives. The book draws attention to labour conditions and living standards in areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that mine cobalt, a metal that will be critical in the hoped-for global energy transition.

Across 250 pages, it argues that by consuming products that contain Congolese cobalt, Western consumers are complicit in a human rights and environmental catastrophe.

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Curiosity spurred Virginia Heffernan to write a Ring of Fire book – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – March 4, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Toronto mining journalist hits PDAC 2023 with a primer on arrested development in the Far North

“Keep the faith.” It was an oft-used phrase by Richard “Dick” Nemis, a Sudbury native and colourful mining promoter whose company, Noront Resources, secured one of the largest land positions in the mineral-rich area of the James Bay known as the Ring of Fire.

Nemis clung to that motto even as he was being ousted by shareholders as the president of the junior mining company he helped establish in October 2008. It was personal blow since the exploration outfit was named after his father’s industrial fabrication company, started in the Nickel City in 1945, and still in operation today.

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