Books, Art, Music and Photography About Mining and Northern Topics – Page 7

Pictures from the atomic age: The AGO’s Camera Atomica exhibit is oddly poignant – by David Berry (National Post – July 21, 2015)

July 22, 2015

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

The first official image in Camera Atomica is an x-ray; the first x-ray, actually, taken by physicist Wilhelm Rontgen, of his wife’s hand (her wedding ring is still visible as a rather large lump).

The discovery of this miraculous technology — it “makes the invisible visible” curator John O’Brian proudly proclaims — was an accident. But it was also our first, fumbling step into the atomic age, our first grasp of a power that would come to (quite literally) rewrite the DNA of the human experience.

“When Rontgen’s wife saw it, she was shocked. She said, ‘I’ve seen my own death,’” O’Brian explains, pointing to the image and pausing for dramatic effect. “That sort of predicted some of the worst sides of it. But this shows you there’s really a fatal interdependence between the camera and nuclear fission.”

O’Brian’s exhibit gathers some of the most powerful photographic images of the last 120 years of nuclear power — not, he says, to get us to contemplate our own deaths, but to bring attention back to an issue that’s still humming in the background of our everyday life.

BOOK: Once Upon A Mine – Story of Pre-Confederation Mines on the Island of Newfoundland – by Wendy Martin (1999)

July 6, 2015

Chapter One – Dawn of Mining Days

Mark Twain once maintained that ‘a mine is a hole in the ground with a liar on top’, an unflattering view which supports the common belief that mines are prospective derelicts owned by derelict prospectors. The Newfoundland mining industry has, even so, survived for over 100 years and currently holds a lucrative position in the Newfoundland economy.

The mining history of Newfoundland extends further in time and space than is generally recognised. Nearly every major bay around the Island contains at least one abandoned mine that still lives within the memories of adjacent communities; and although the first recorded mining attempt happened only two centuries ago, a knowledge ofNewfoundland minerals has existed for twice that time span.

Sixteenth-century English explorers made the earliest documented references to Newfoundland minerals. When Sir Martin Frobisherexamined the shores of what is assumed to have been Newfoundland’s Trinity Bay in 1576, he found a shiny heavy stone(1) – probably pyrite, a mineral now known locally as ‘Catalina stone’after the Trinity Bay town of Catalina. Anthony Parkhurst returned to England in 1578 with pieces of copper and iron ore from the St.John’s and Bell Island areas.

On the strength of the Frobisher and Parkhurst discoveries, Sir Humphrey Gilbert took a Saxon ore refiner named Daniel of Buda with him to Newfoundland in 1583. Daniel, an energetic individual, retrieved an array of copper, iron, lead and silver ores from the Avalon Peninsula.

Miners, mugs, Mr Asia – and bat droppings – by Trevor Sykes (Australian Financial Review – July 2, 2015)

July 2, 2015

http://www.afr.com/

Pierpont’s favourite drinking companions are geologists. Their first qualification is that they’re always thirsty, having spent their formative years chipping at rocks in the arid outback of Australia, where the nearest pub is usually 100 miles or more away.

Their second qualification is that they’re literally a down-to-earth bunch. They are quite skilled scientists, but the science of geology inevitably entails plodding around a lot of harsh landscape, so they rarely become academically out of touch with the real world.

Finally – and best of all – any geologist who’s been in the profession for a few decades has an excellent knowledge of which ore deposits are likely to be profitable and which aren’t: a characteristic which has saved your correspondent from many an investment disaster.

So Pierpont was overjoyed when he heard that John Gaskell had written his memoirs, because John is a boy who has been around. He started life in Wigan but now lives in Australia after a career that has taken him through Malawi, Malaysia, Tennessee and a few other places. As there are rocks all around our planet, most geologists have worked in the backblocks of more than one country, which gives them a good perspective on the world.

A note on the historical accuracy of this [Iron Range] novel – by Megan Marsnik (Minneapolis Star Tribune – May 20, 2015)

May 21, 2015

http://www.startribune.com/

“Under Ground” is a work of fiction based on actual events that occurred in northern Minnesota during the tumultuous iron mining strike of 1916.

All of the local characters are fictional. Although some were inspired by actual Iron Range natives, their lives and words as portrayed in this novel are imagined, placed in historical context of the times. For example, fictional character Milo Blatnik was inspired by two miners: Joe Greeni and John Alar. On June 2, 1916, Greeni led the strike walkout at the St. James mine and was followed by more than 20,000 men.

On June 22, Alar, a husband and father of three, was fatally shot in the yard of his Hibbing home as picketers marched nearby. As with the fictional character Milo, Alar’s funeral procession followed a black banner that read “Murdered by Oliver Gunmen,” photographs of which are available at the Iron Range Research Center in Chisholm, Minn. Thousands attended and his death marked a turning point in the uprising.

The “What we want is more pork chops” speech delivered in the novel by fictional character Andre Kristeva was a real speech delivered June 22, 1916, by mining clerical worker George Andreytchine.

Excerpt From Call of the Northland: Riding the Train That Nearly Toppled a Government – by Thomas Blampied

May 21, 2015

To order a copy of Call of the Northland: Riding the Train That Nearly Toppled a Government, click here: http://www.northland-book.net/buy.html

Historian, author and photographer Thomas Blampied has been interested in railways for as long as he can remember. Growing up east of Toronto, he spent summer evenings sitting trackside with his father watching streamlined VIA trains race past and long freight trains rumble by. From these early railway experiences grew a lifelong passion for railways and rail travel which has manifested itself through model railroading, photography, writing, railway preservation and the academic study of railway history. This is his fourth book about railways in Ontario. He has studied in both Canada and the United Kingdom and currently resides in Southern Ontario.

Chapter 14: Transformation

After a year of no Northlander service, very little else had changed in the divestment saga. While Michael Gravelle was on record as stating that divestment was not the only option, the continued indecision and lack of transparency did not lend credibility to the government’s new position. For his part, Vic Fedeli was especially frustrated that documents related to divestment remained restricted. Meanwhile, the future of the ‘Ring of Fire’ appeared even less rosy.

Having failed in its request for an easement, Cliffs Natural Resources decided to appeal the decision, a move which would mean years of court proceedings. As Cliffs prepared for the long-haul, passengers on the ONTC’s buses gave up travelling at Thanksgiving as it was standing room only for a second year running, with even the most determined passengers opting to try to travel another day in the hopes of getting a seat.

The divestment was only one of many concerns in the north. To local leaders, the plight of the ONTC was symptomatic of wider problems in the region. While resource extraction continued across the north, raw material was increasingly being moved out of the province to be processed in other jurisdictions with cheaper energy costs.

Excerpt From Call of the Northland: Riding the Train That Nearly Toppled a Government – by Thomas Blampied

May 15, 2015

To order a copy of Call of the Northland: Riding the Train That Nearly Toppled a Government, click here: http://www.northland-book.net/buy.html

Chapter 4: The North

The next station was one I had been looking forward to for many years – Cobalt. Legend has it that the town’s silver bonanza was set off by one Fred La Rose, a blacksmith, who threw a hammer to scare away a fox. According to the tale, when his hammer missed the animal and hit the ground, it uncovered a vein of silver. While this story might be true, the credit for the first silver find goes to J.H. McKinley and Ernest Darragh, who were scouting for suitable timber for railway ties.

Their claim predated La Rose’s by a month and, besides, La Rose incorrectly identified his silver vein as copper. The approach to “Silver City,” renowned for its steep and winding streets, is truly special as the line carves a long, sweeping curve around the lakeshore before passing the station. We were one minute late at 4:21 but, with nobody there, we rolled right by the large station and on past the preserved mine buildings. This is what I had wanted to see for so long. Some of the most iconic shots of the ONR over the years have been taken from the road bridge overlooking this spot – with the mine to the left and the railway snaking around an “s” curve to the right.

Excerpt From Call of the Northland: Riding the Train That Nearly Toppled a Government – by Thomas Blampied

May 14, 2015

To order a copy of Call of the Northland: Riding the Train That Nearly Toppled a Government, click here: http://www.northland-book.net/buy.html

Chapter 1: First Steps to the North

The day of the trip: before dawn. Up around five, I was packed and ready to go. My journey would take two trains: one west into Toronto and then one north to Cochrane. I had some breakfast, never much on travel or photo days, and got a ride to the Whitby Station. It was a cold and drizzly morning in late April as I waited on the platform for the 6:18 GO train to Toronto. I must have looked odd, standing with all my bags and winter coat in the rain, among the latest spring fashions.

The train arrived and I boarded with the commuters – all of them pushy and determined to have their seat. As usual, I sat up behind the crew, but was disappointed to see that the window separating the crew and passengers had been boarded up. I had liked looking through this window for years as I could see the track ahead from the crew’s point of view.

The weather did not improve as we rolled along the GO Subdivision (the operational name for a particular stretch of track, a subdivision is often referred to as a Sub), running parallel to Highway 401.

The Klondike Gold Rush debuts Jan. 6 on PBS – by Tony Wong (Toronto Star – January 1, 2015)

April 5, 2015January 5, 2015

http://www.pbs.org/wned/klondike-gold-rush/home/

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.

Documentary about Yukon gold rush in the late 1800s based in part on Charlotte Gray’s Gold Diggers.

Canadian author Charlotte Gray has mined literary gold by plumbing the history of the Klondike. Her well-reviewed 2010 book Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike spawned a scripted miniseries executive-produced by Ridley Scott, starring Tim Roth and Sam Shepard on the Discovery Channel. And now PBS is premiering TheKlondike Gold Rush on Tuesday, Jan. 6.

The documentary is not entirely based on Gray’s book, but the Ottawa author is featured extensively in the hour-long program, along with historians Michael Gates and Terrence Cole.

“People set off with very little clue about where they were going, they were swept up in this mass hysteria,” says Gray in the film. “The saying was that there was gold as thick as a cheese on a sandwich.”

‘Deep Down Dark,’ by Héctor Tobar – by Mac McClelland (New York Times – November 20, 2014)

December 1, 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/

In 1987, a toddler who became known to the world as Baby Jessica fell into an abandoned well in a backyard in Midland, Tex., where she was stuck for 58 hours. Watching the coverage as a 7-year-old, I couldn’t get an answer from the newscasters or my parents that explained why it was taking so long for so many smart grown-ups to solve such a simple problem. Even now, I find it hard to believe that the human race can be outmatched by such a primitive adversary as a hole in the ground.

Crises of faith are the dominant theme of Héctor Tobar’s “Deep Down Dark,” the story of 33 men who were buried for 69 days in a collapsed Chilean mine in 2010. With his exclusive access to the survivors, Tobar, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, graphically recounts the quandaries that beset the men as well as their families — camped out at the mine’s entrance — the officials and rescue crews as a worldwide audience watched. There is weeping.

There is acceptance of death. There is the miners’ terror, every time the rescue drill stops, that they have been given up for dead. “The silence just destroyed us,” one man told Tobar. “Without a positive sign, your faith collapses. Because faith isn’t totally blind.” Some men find a stronger connection to God (“Omar realizes that the improbable fact of their survival also carries a hint of the divine. To be alive in this hole, against all odds, speaks to Omar of the existence of a higher power with some sort of plan for these still-living men”). Others struggle with whether to pray or to succumb to the darkness and lie down to die.

The hierarchy that gave the miners order in their workday routine is destroyed almost instantaneously. The shift supervisor buckles under the realities of the collapse and abdicates his authority.

Book review: John Grisham’s ‘Gray Mountain’ is a searing look at Big Coal – by Patrick Anderson (Washington Post – October 19, 2014)

November 11, 2014

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

At the start of “Gray Mountain,” John Grisham’s angry and important new novel, Samantha Kofer — age 29, Washington native, graduate of Georgetown and Columbia Law — is a third-year associate at a huge New York law firm. She works 100 hours a week, doing boring chores that she hates, but she’s earning $180,000 a year and expects to be a $2 million-a-year partner by age 35.

Or she did expect that, until September 2008, when the economy tanked and panicked law firms began ridding themselves of associates and partners. We meet Samantha at the moment — “day ten after the fall of Lehman Brothers” — when the ax falls for her, with only one consolation offered. If laid-off associates will agree to intern with a nonprofit agency, they can keep their health benefits and will be considered for rehiring if prosperity returns. Thus it is that Samantha finds herself at the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic in tiny Brady, Va., in the heart of Appalachia.

That opening scene, wherein a world of privilege abruptly vanishes for astonished young people who have known only success, is startling, but no more than Grisham’s portrait of the world of poverty and injustice that Samantha soon enters. The author does justice to the physical beauty of Appalachia and to the decency of most of its people, but his real subject is the suffering inflicted on those people by mining companies and politicians who pander to them.

Samantha’s new boss, Mattie Wyatt, has kept the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic alive for 26 years. The first case she assigns to Samantha is that of a woman who needs protection from a husband who deals in crystal meth and beats her.

Disaster down deep — inside the 2010 Chilean mine collapse – by Héctor Tobar (National Post – November 3, 2014)

November 3, 2014

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

In the San José Mine, sea level is the chief point of reference. The five-by-five-metre tunnel of the Ramp begins at Level 720, which is 720 metres above sea level. The Ramp descends into the mountain as a series of switchbacks, and then farther down becomes a spiral. Assorted machines and the men who operate them drive down past Level 200, into the part of the mountain where there are still minerals to be brought to the surface.

On the morning of Aug. 5, 2010, the men of the A shift are working as far down as Level 40, some 2,230 vertical feet below the surface, loading freshly blasted ore into a dump truck. Another group of men are at Level 60, working to fortify a passageway near a spot where a man lost a limb in an accident one month earlier. A few have gathered for a moment of rest, or idleness, in or near El Refugio, the Refuge, an enclosed space about the size of a school classroom, carved out of the rock at Level 90, that serves as both emergency shelter and break room.

The mechanics led by Juan Carlos Aguilar find respite from the oppressive heat by setting up a workshop at Level 150, in a passageway not far from the vast interior chasm called El Rajo, which translates loosely as “the Pit.” The mechanics have decided to start their workweek by asking Mario Sepúlveda to give them a demonstration of how he operates his front loader. They watch as he uses the clutch to bring the vehicle to a stop, shifting from forward directly to reverse without going into neutral first. He’s mucking up the transmission by doing this, wearing out the differential. “No one ever showed me,” Sepúlveda explains when asked why he’s operating the machine that way. “I just learned from watching.”

Resources, Empire & Labour: Crisis, Lessons & Alternatives – Edited by David Leadbeater

October 14, 2014

To order a copy of Resources, Empire & Labour: Crisis, Lessons & Alternatives, click here: http://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/resources-empire-and-labour

The interconnections of natural resources, empire and labour run through the most central and conflict-ridden crises of our times: war, environmental degradation, impoverishment and plutocracy. Crucial to understand and to change the conditions that give rise to these crises is the critical study of resource development and, more broadly, the resources question, which is the subject of this volume. Intended for researchers, students and activists, the chapters in Resources, Empire and Labour illuminate key aspects of the resources question from a variety of angles through concrete analyses and histories focused on the extractive industries of mining, oil and gas.

Saskatchewan: Social Democracy in a Resource Hinterland – by John W. Warnock

Saskatchewan has always been seen as a hinterland area and economy within the Canadian territorial state. Geographically, it is part of the interior plains of the North American continent. Prior to the European colonial invasion it was the home to Indigenous Peoples who had adapted to the local ecology and survived mainly as hunter-gatherer communities. The colonial settlement of the region expanded in the late nineteenth century under the National Policy of John A. Macdonald’s Conservative government. Across the prairie grain belt, land taken from the Indigenous Peoples was declared state land and then distributed to white settlers through the Homestead Acts.

The National Policy was a capital accumulation project: the creation of a national market, the population of the west by white settlers from Europe and the United States, the development of the wheat economy for export and the protection of industrial capitalism in central Canada.Behind a tariff wall, an economic surplus could be extracted from independent commodity producers via banking and finance and the monopoly power of the farm supply industry and the downstream processing and distribution industries. As I have argued and referenced elsewhere (Warnock 2004), this system of political economy became a major Canadian example ofmetropolitan domination of hinterland areas.

Resources, Empire & Labour: Crisis, Lessons & Alternatives – Edited by David Leadbeater

October 6, 2014

To order a copy of Resources, Empire & Labour: Crisis, Lessons & Alternatives, click here: http://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/resources-empire-and-labour

Natural Resources in Japanese Imperialism: The Yasuba Critique

To discuss the evidence on the role of natural resources in Japanese imperialism, a useful point of departure, despite many flaws, is Yasukichi Yasuba’s 1996 article “Did Japan Ever Suffer from a Shortage of Natural Resources Before World War II?” Yasuba challenges the resource-shortage explanation of Japanese imperialism.

According to Yasuba, proponents of the resource shortage view emphasize that Japan had a high population density and also suffered from a lack of natural resources. The situation became particularly acute in the 1930s with the rise of protectionism in the high-income countries to which Japan shipped many of its exports.

These features of the situation made it attractive for Japan’s leaders to pursue military expansion. By establishing political control over more territory, it could obtain more resources and it could create a trade bloc and thereby find markets for its exports, markets that would serve as alternatives to the markets of the other imperialist powers and their areas of control. The territories acquired could also provide an outlet for surplus Japanese population.

[Nanaimo] City’s south is steeped in history – by Lynne Bowen (Nanaimo Daily News – September 11, 2014)

September 11, 2014

http://www.nanaimodailynews.com/

Mining families lived in small houses and grew their own food, single men found in boarding houses

Excerpt From Lynne Bowen’s essay: Thinking Back, from the forthcoming publication for Black Diamond Dust.

Lynne Bowen is an award winning Nanaimo-based historian and author known for her landmark 1982 book ‘Boss Whistle: The Coal Miners of Vancouver Island Remember,’ and six other important books about British Columbia history.

Haliburton Street was the most important thoroughfare in the South End. Mining families lived there or on the streets above and below it; single men lived in the boarding houses that clustered around the corner nearest the pub where the day shift miners, except those who were teetotal, drank beer after work.

In a town where all the important streets and avenues were named after English coal company directors, it was fitting that the main thoroughfare of the South End, where the biggest mine in British Columbia drew coal from under the harbour, was named after the best known among the directors.

Thomas Chandler Haliburton had lived most of his life in Nova Scotia, but had moved to Britain when he retired. Although he had been a judge and a politician on both sides of the Atlantic, posterity knows him best as the creator of the Sam Slick satirical sketches, which made him a bestselling author in Nova Scotia, Great Britain and the United States.

Excerpt from Potash: An Inside Account of Saskatchewan’s Pink Gold – by John Burton

July 4, 2014

To order a copy of Potash: An Inside Account of Saskatchewan’s Pink Gold, click here: http://www.uofrpress.ca/publications/Potash

John Burton grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, studied at the University of Saskatchewan and the London School of Economics, was elected to Parliament, and played a major role in Saskatchewan’s 1975 decision to acquire potash-producing facilities. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Crown-owned Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan from 1975 to 1982.

CHAPTER 2: Beginnings and Development

Tommy Douglas, political leader of the CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation), led the party to a massive election win on June 15, 1944. He had a strong complement of competent and dedicated people to choose from in selecting a Cabinet for his government. One of those people was Joe Phelps, a dynamic, aggressive, action-oriented man. He was a fiery speaker known for his excitability, verbosity, and temper. Douglas appointed him minister of natural resources but with some misgivings. His mandate was to diversify the economy, and Phelps produced results with a wide variety of initiatives, some of which got the government into trouble. He and his officials constantly looked for new opportunities.

One official picked up a report supposed to be kept hush-hush that some stuff called “potash” had been found near Radville by one of the companies drilling for oil in 1942. The informant had to emphasize that the “stuff” was much more important than any of several salts found on the surface.

This information was of interest since there was no knowledge of the find until then. Other indications of potash came to light subsequently, and by 1946–47, potash was identified as a resource with significant potential for Saskatchewan. The province had endured more than a half century of struggles and problems during its early development phase, with many harsh times that often tempered the dreams of its pioneers. Thus, the prospect of new opportunities was greeted eagerly and created new hope for the struggling province.