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

All that glitters is not enriched uranium – by Matthew Hart (Globe and Mail – November 21, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

As Iran’s Supreme Leader talked about “red lines” and U.S. President Barack Obama struggled to head off tougher sanctions that could derail his diplomacy, a powerful subtext rippled beneath the surface of Iranian negotiations with the West when they resumed Wednesday: Which metal does Iran want most, at least in the short term – enriched uranium or gold?

Until this summer, the gold trade with Turkey provided a loophole through which much-needed Western currencies flowed into Iran. Tehran urgently wants that loophole opened up again. Here’s how it worked.

Iran sold oil and gas to Turkey. The buyer paid in Turkish lira deposited to an Iranian account in Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank. Iranian gold dealers had access to the Halkbank money, and used it to buy gold in Turkey. The gold was then hand-carried from Turkey to Dubai and sold to traders for the dollars and euros Iran so desperately needs.

Turkey can openly buy oil and gas from Iran because it has a waiver under the sanctions protocols that prohibit other countries from doing so. However, the gold flow to Iran enabled a more robust exception to the sanctions than envisaged by the waiver.

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The Cremation of Sam McGee – by Robert W. Service [RepublicOfMining.com – Halloween Theme]

 

For some background on this classic poem, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cremation_of_Sam_McGee

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”

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The Nickel Miner’s Ghost – by Mark Leslie and Jenny Jelen (Excerpt from Spooky Sudbury: True Tales of the Eerie & Unexplained) [RepublicOfMining.com – Halloween Theme]

To order a copy of Spooky Sudbury, click here: http://www.dundurn.com/books/spooky_sudbury

For a CBC Sudbury interview with Mark Leslie, click here: http://www.cbc.ca/morningnorth/past-episodes/2013/10/01/spooky-sudbury/

The Nickel Miner’s Ghost

It was a fresh new century when, in newlywed bliss, Amanda, her husband, their daughter, and a red Doberman moved into the beautiful old house they had purchased in an established Sudbury neighbourhood. The gorgeous two-storey home had character and charm, but it also held a little something else that wouldn’t fully reveal itself until a couple of years later, when their son arrived.

And though their very first night in the new home was a disturbing night to remember, the chills that later greeted them were never frightening, never threatening; they were merely eerie. “Our first night at the house was a horror!” Amanda says with a bit of a grin.

They were exhausted from the day of moving, and the beautiful spa bath upstairs that had so attracted Amanda when they had been considering the home called to her like a siren beckoning a sailor on the open seas.

Amanda started the tub, filled it up, and then went down¬stairs to get a nice glass of wine to drink while relaxing in the tub. It wasn’t until she was heading back upstairs that she heard what sounded like rain inside the house. She ran back down to the kitchen to see water pouring from the pot lights in the kitchen ceiling.

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Haunted 2650 Level of Levack Mine – by Mark Leslie and Jenny Jelen (Excerpt from Spooky Sudbury: True Tales of the Eerie & Unexplained) [RepublicOfMining.com – Halloween Theme]

To order a copy of Spooky Sudbury, click here: http://www.dundurn.com/books/spooky_sudbury

For a CBC Sudbury interview with Mark Leslie, click here: http://www.cbc.ca/morningnorth/past-episodes/2013/10/01/spooky-sudbury/

Haunted 2650 Level of Levack Mine

It is a well-known fact that shift work and general over-tiredness can often lead to a change in perception, a blurring of the lines between reality and the dream world. In his 1996 book, Sleep Thieves, Stanley Coren described the effects of sleep-deprivation on our physical and mental health.

One such side-effect has to do with hallucinations. Coren documented what happened when Peter Tripp, a New York City DJ, decided to go without sleep for two hundred hours for a charity fund-raising event. Early into the experience, Tripp experienced distortions in his visual perceptions: he was inter-preting spots on the table as bugs, seeing spiders crawling around his booth, and even spinning webs on his shoes.3 Later on, Tripp was so susceptible to delusions that he became convinced that the doctor monitoring his health was actually an undertaker there to bury him alive. Tripp could no longer properly distinguish between reality and his nightmares.

Tripp’s experiences are perhaps a bit extreme, but Coren also includes multiple references to the effect of shift-work on internal circadian clocks. He illustrates how workers on rotating shifts tend to sleep two less hours per day, spend most of their time sleeping in the lightest stages of sleep, and thus typically suffer from sleep deprivation and build up a significant amount of sleep debt.

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Before he was a billionaire, Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest ran with a colourful crowd – by Paul Garvey (The Australian – October 23, 2013)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business

BEFORE he became the nation’s greatest philanthropist, Andrew Forrest was a fast-talking salesman who borrowed millions of dollars from a convicted drug dealer and employed disgraced former West Australian premier Brian Burke to help him smash the BHP Billiton-Rio Tinto duopoly in the Pilbara iron ore industry.

Mr Burke, a lobbyist and former close adviser to Mr Forrest, boasts in a new book to be published next week that he was able to lean on bureaucrats and MPs to have key legislation passed for the entrepreneur in just a few months, despite the process normally taking 18 months.

Twiggy: The High-Stakes Life of Andrew Forrest, by Andrew Burrell, a Perth-based journalist with The Australian, also details how four judges in four separate court cases have questioned the businessman’s ethics and truthfulness during his colourful career. Mr Forrest rejected repeated approaches to co-operate with Burrell and to respond to claims made by others in the book.

The unauthorised biography investigates how Mr Forrest transformed himself, through boundless energy and cunning, from a corporate pariah after being removed as chief executive of Anaconda Nickel in 2001 into one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs and a philanthropist who is feted by the establishment.

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From Big Bang to No Wimper: A historical book review – by Dieter K. Buse (Sudbury Star – September 30, 2013)

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

To order a copy of “From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City”, please click here:  http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Catalog/saarinen-meteorite.shtml

In 1980, a disgruntled person who had moved from Sudbury to Edmonton, Alta., published a long piece in the Edmonton Journal proclaiming the demise of the city he had left and ranting at length about its problems.

Yet, 30 years later, despite a mess at city hall — though not matched by the Ford brothers show in Toronto or rotation of mayors in Montreal — and crumbling infrastructure as everywhere, Sudbury seems to be more than surviving. With every passing year it becomes a more attractive place to live due to its physical setting among lakes, its increasingly diversified economy (research institutes, medical school) and the limited stresses of a mid-sized regional service centre.

The lengthy book under review, Oiva W. Saarinen’s From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City: A Historical Geography of Greater Sudbury, is the most comprehensive account of Sudbury’s past published to date and helps to explain its survival despite the many odds aligned against it. The author underscores the importance of space and place to understanding the city’s long-term development and its continued difficulties.

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Local ghost tale subject of book – by Kyle Gennings (Timmins Daily Press – September 5, 2013)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – Timmins is a community built on harrowing tales. There are many stories of men and women who overcame everything under the sun to build a life for themselves in the wild and unforgiving North.

But for a local educator, it was one story that inspired him. It is a story that has stayed with him and moved him to share it with the world.

That story is Popchuck’s Ghost. “Let me tell you a little bit of the history of the book,” said author and educator Paul Toffanello. “Back in the mid ’80s when I was teaching at Schumacher Public, I had a bunch of boys who were pretty reluctant readers and I had to find some way to engage them.

“And it just so happened that the Joe Cameron from Camp Bickell asked me to be the director at Camp Bickell and I found out there was a ghost called Arnold Popchuck. “I just took all of the little stories that the kids at the camp had about him and put it all together into a story that I hand wrote.

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How rage over a Mexican mining tragedy has propelled a union leader’s book to the bestseller list – by Oakland Ross (Toronto Star – July 27, 2013)

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.

In Collapse of Dignity, Napoleon Gomez Urrutia reveals much about Mexico’s corrupt mining sector – but what about himself?

Will the real Napoleon Gomez Urrutia please stand up? About 66 years old and living in exile in Vancouver, the Mexican labour leader has trod many different paths during a long, eventful career, and now he has written a book about that journey.

Titled Collapse of Dignity: The Story of a Mining Tragedy and the Fight Against Greed and Corruption in Mexico, the densely written volume recently scaled its way into the Top 10 on The New York Times list of non-fiction bestsellers, an impressive achievement by any measure and all the more so in this case because a good deal of the book is at least somewhat fictitious.

It’s also pretty hard slogging for much of its 368-page length. Still, the good parts are engrossing, and they centre on a mining disaster – or, really, two mining disasters. One of these mishaps took place in northern Mexico, on Feb. 19, 2006, and it was an unmitigated catastrophe.

Sixty-five men lost their lives after a huge explosion hit the Pasta de Conchos coal mine in the early hours that day.

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Excerpt: From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City: A Historical Geography of Greater Sudbury – by Oiva W. Saarinen

To order a copy of “From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City”, please click here: http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Catalog/saarinen-meteorite.shtml

Sudbury: A Union Town? (Part 5 of 5)

Post-Merger Events

In the years following 1967, both unions went their separate ways, each respectful of the other. In 1969, Inco tested the mettle of the Steelworkers, resulting in a 128-day strike. Unlike previous strikes, this one was quiet and orderly. With no nickel stockpile at hand, the Steelworkers outlasted Inco. The strike ended on November 15, 1969, with the union winning major gains in wages and, for the first time, a cost of living allowance (COLA). The union made progress on issues such as the “contracting out” of jobs, training and apprenticeship opportunities, and an evaluation of all job classifications at Inco. The last act resulted in major monetary gains for numerous positions. Falconbridge workers went on strike around the same time and reached a similar settlement, albeit without a contracting out provision.

The signing of the 1969 contract set a positive tone for the next three years because of Inco’s desire to project a revamped company image. The setting was advantageous for the Steelworkers as well, and its membership rose to a peak of 18 224 in July of 1971. Over the next six months, however, the situation changed as Inco announced cutbacks, layoffs, and the closing of the Coniston smelter. Despite this gloomy setting, the union signed a contract that introduced a new clause allowing workers to retain their seniority throughout any of Inco’s operations. Formerly, workers who moved from one department to another lost their seniority. For the first time in mining history, a Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee (JOHC) was negotiated. During the 1970s, the Steelworkers promoted the concept of mining as a trade, and in cooperation with company officials and Local 598 at Falconbridge, created a “common core” training program for basic underground hard rock mining.

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Excerpt: From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City: A Historical Geography of Greater Sudbury – by Oiva W. Saarinen

To order a copy of “From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City”, please click here: http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Catalog/saarinen-meteorite.shtml

Sudbury: A Union Town? (Part 4 of 5)

The Battle for Inco Begins

The District Two Convention held in Sudbury April 24–29, 1961, served as the scene of the first clash in the all-out battle for union supremacy. In contrast to the local’s meetings where it was the old guard leading the confrontation process, the new guard led by Gillis took this opportunity to harangue Chairman Solski and his supporters. Predictably, chaos resulted, and not a single resolution was passed. Since no progress had been achieved, the Gillis executive again did not remit the local’s dues to the National Office.

This move was supported by the majority of the local’s members, as shown by the third election victory of the Gillis slate on June 7, 1961. By this time, the new Local 598 leaders were exploring the option of seceding Local 598 from the National and International Union, and becoming a chartered local of the CLC.

When it became clear that the only way Local 598 could get into the CLC was by joining the Steelworkers, The Sudbury Star joined in the cause by printing a story under the headline, “Has Steel Begun Drive to Supplant Mine Mill?” Given the threat of losing Local 598’s buildings and finances, the National Office succeeded in acquiring a local injunction, allowing William Kennedy, its Secretary-Treasurer, to administer the local on the National’s behalf. On August 26, the Union Hall was taken over by Kennedy.

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Excerpt from “An Insider’s Guide to the Mining Sector: An in-depth study of gold and mining shares”– by Michael Coulson

To order a copy of An Insider’s Guide to the Mining Sector, please click here: http://www.harriman-house.com/book/view/66/investing/michael-coulson/an-insiders-guide-to-the-mining-sector/

Investing in gold

Our main concern in this book is to steer investors through the mining share market, and the gold share sector has always offered an encouraging number of choices. However, investors in particular have in the past dabbled in physical gold whether by buying gold coins such as Krugerrands and Sovereigns, or gold in bar form, so a brief mention here is appropriate.

Physical gold

One of the characteristics of gold that makes it an investment vehicle is the fact that it is high value for low weight, as people fleeing revolution with only one (strong) suitcase have found to their advantage. It is also very easy to store as it is very dense, consequently its weight is compacted into a small dimension. So a 400oz bar measuring, in ‘old money’, around 7x3x3 inches, is worth $340,000 (at $850/oz). If you carried the same amount of wealth in the form of copper you would need to plan for a substantial lorry to carry the 50 tonnes or so – not much good if you’re in a hurry to catch the last plane out of Saigon, for example.

Gold broadly can be bought for physical delivery or for storage in a secure warehouse. There are a number of specialist gold and gold coin dealers who will take small orders, although the bullion banks are after wealthy customers only.

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Excerpt: From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City: A Historical Geography of Greater Sudbury – by Oiva W. Saarinen

To order a copy of “From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City”, please click here: http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Catalog/saarinen-meteorite.shtml

Sudbury: A Union Town? (Part 3 of 5)

The 1958 Inco Strike

The first action in what was to become the “year of the strike” was taken by Inco, when it announced on March 15, 1958, that due to the economic recession, it was reducing production and laying off 1 000 employees in Sudbury, and 300 in Port Colborne. This was followed on May 23 by a further layoff of 300 men. On June 17, Inco placed all of its remaining hourly rated workers on a 32-hour week. The fact that the latter two layoffs took place during the negotiating process for a new contract added fuel to the fire. By this time it was clear that Inco, with its substantial stockpile of inventory during a period of reduced demand for nickel, was in a stronger bargaining position; as well, the company had no fear of a production shutdown, as this would allow it time to develop new domestic markets for nickel to replace decreasing military demands.

While negotiations were taking place, a number of wildcat provocations occurred at several plants and mines. Since Local 598 had advocated to its members that they should continue working, suspicions were raised that dissidents within the union were deliberately using these tactics to force Mine Mill into a questionable strike. When further meetings with the company proved unsuccessful, conciliation talks were held. The conciliation board favoured the company position and recommended a one-year contract. Not satisfied with this response, the union went on strike on September 24. For the first time since the chimneys in Copper Cliff were built, the smoke plumes were absent. Thus began a series of mining-related events that were to haunt the Sudbury area for the rest of the century.

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Excerpt: From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City: A Historical Geography of Greater Sudbury – by Oiva W. Saarinen

To order a copy of “From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City”, please click here: http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Catalog/saarinen-meteorite.shtml

Sudbury: A Union Town? (Part 2 of 5)

The Heyday of Mine Mill (1944–1958)

In line with the original mandate of the WFM, Local 598 turned its attention to spreading the cause of unionism into the service industries. While this mission was done in part to prevent the Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL) unions from organizing the service industries in Mine Mill strongholds, the broader desire to raise minimum wages that existed throughout Sudbury at the time was equally important. To face this situation, Local 902 was chartered as a General Workers’ Union in 1949. Existing CCL unions consisting mainly of bartenders quickly signed up. The ambitious campaign by Mine Mill to organize the remaining service workers in the area caused considerable consternation and resentment among Sudbury’s merchant class.

Despite several setbacks, Local 902 was able to boast twenty-four contracts (mainly at hotels) by the end of 1950. Among these contracts was one signed with the Sudbury Brewing and Malting Company. Another union achievement was its organization of grocery chain stories that were making their appearance in Sudbury. In a rapid-fire campaign, all the clerks at Dominion Stores were unionized by 1952. In 1954, Mine Mill became the first bona fide union at Loblaws in Ontario. Organizational drives continued, so that numerous bakeries, dairies, laundries, downtown shops, hardware stores, and a few minor industries were brought into the fold. Certification of the 5- and 10-cent chain stories proved to be more elusive.

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Excerpt: From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City: A Historical Geography of Greater Sudbury – by Oiva W. Saarinen

To order a copy of “From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City”, please click here: http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Catalog/saarinen-meteorite.shtml

Sudbury: A Union Town? (Part 1 of 5)

While Sudbury’s history has been intimately associated with the corporate aspect of resource extraction, this linkage also brought with it another aspect of the mining spectrum—unionism. Indeed, Sudbury has long had the reputation of being a union town. While most Sudburians have traditionally taken pride in this image, for others it has been regarded as a dubious distinction. The latter view, for instance, is explicit in the book For the Years to Come, a history of International Nickel of Canada written by one of the company’s chairmen in 1960, where the existence of Mine Mill did not even warrant mention in the book’s index.

When viewed in the context of Inco’s traditional hegemony in Sudbury and its influence in the corridors of power in Toronto and Ottawa, and the lack of interest shown by other Canadians to Sudbury’s woes related to hazardous working conditions, mining assessments, and environmental issues, it was inevitable that some counterforce to this capitalism would appear.

This resistance came in the form of the only option available to workers: unionism, notably via the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW), known locally as Mine Mill. For three decades, Mine Mill had an honourable tradition of supporting its union members and the wider community through cultural programs and fundraising activities. Its presence was sufficiently strong in the 1950s to encourage the rise of unions in other sectors of the community.

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Excerpt from “An Insider’s Guide to the Mining Sector: An in-depth study of gold and mining shares”– by Michael Coulson

To order a copy of An Insider’s Guide to the Mining Sector, please click here: http://www.harriman-house.com/book/view/66/investing/michael-coulson/an-insiders-guide-to-the-mining-sector/

Stock market cycles

We have talked earlier about mining shares in relation to stock market cycles for industrial equities. I now want to look at mining share cycles over the last thirty years or so to see where they sit in terms of overall market cycles, and whether there are any pointers we can find that could be applied in the future.

The situation that any investor wants to avoid is tying too much of his money up for long periods of time in a sector which is underperforming. Having said this, I am not backtracking on my view that every portfolio should have a core of gold shares because of their counter-cyclical role when industrial shares come under pressure. In that context the gold content acts as insurance against a general equity bear market, and the gold core, when the general industrial market is in a bull phase, will in any case represent only a small percentage of the portfolio’s value.

Australia, late 60s – the first modern mining boom

The first modern mining boom was that which ‘infected’ the Australian market in the second half of the 60s, and which eventually ran out of steam following the rise and fall of Poseidon. The bull market lasted from 1966 until 1970, and until the last year or so marched in step with strong industrial bull markets, particularly in the US, the UK and South Africa.

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