Mining and Oil Sector Image – Page 20

[Canada] Two faced on asbestos – by Lorne Gunter (National Post – September 14, 2011)

September 14, 2011

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

June was a very wet month in Edmonton. It rained nearly every day. Sometimes, it poured. And sometimes when it poured, it also blew – hard. Near the end of the month, rain fell for three days straight, while the wind gusted at times from 90 to 110 kilometres per hour.

The downspout from the upper roof of our home emptied onto the lower roof, from where the precipitation rippled across the shingles, disappeared into the eaves, down the pipe attached to the bricks next to the family room window and out onto the lawn.

In the middle of the night on the third straight day of rain, all the water and wind that had played on the roof over all the years succeeded in lifting the corner of one or two shingles. First a little rain, then a lot, snuck under the protective, overlapping asphalt tiles and leaked into our family room through the pot lights in the ceiling.

Around 5: 00 a.m., as the sun was rising on the upper side of the clouds, I was awakened by a dripping sound. Climbing down the stairs, I found some of the rain that should have been running out onto the lawn falling by drips and spoonfuls onto the rug in two places, as well as onto the middle of a large, overstuffed ottoman.

It’s [Saskatchewan premier] Brad Wall vs. green all-stars [Keystone XL pipeline] – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – September 8, 2011)

September 8, 2011

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

As the United States’ review over whether to grant a permit to the Keystone XL pipeline enters the final stretch, the debate has gotten so out of hand it’s bordering on a gong show.

Wednesday, world jet-setters including the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other Nobel Peace Prize laureates joined former U.S. vice-president Al Gore in opposing the $7-billion Canadian project to carry Canadian oil to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, based on their general disdain for fossil fuels.

Saskatchewan’s Premier, Brad Wall, arguably Canada’s most articulate pitchman, will seek to bring the debate back to reality with a speech to an influential group of U.S. state leaders on Friday facilitated by the former U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins.

At the National Speakers’ Conference, which represents all U.S. state speakers, in Charleston, S.C., the popular Premier plans to talk about the attributes of Canadian oil that are failing to get much needed air time — that it’s “conflict-free,” that it comes from “another freedom-loving country that is a champion of human rights and that has everything in common with the United States, certainly a lot more in common than their other sources of oil.”

Author Naomi Klein arrested in oilsands [Keystone XL pipeline] protest – by Mitch Potter (Toronto Star – September 3, 2011)

September 8, 2011

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.

WASHINGTON—More than 1,000 people have been busted at the gates of the White House the past two weeks, as the most ambitious of climate protests against Canadian oil comes to a head.

Toronto author and activist Naomi Klein was not planning to be among them. Support the cause? Sure. Speak to the anti-tarsands faithful? Absolutely. But to actually get arrested?

No, Klein and the other Canadian protesters in Washington agreed — that is a stand best left to their U.S. counterparts, who need not worry whether such close encounters with law enforcement will hamper their ability to cross borders in the future.

Yet there was Klein on Friday, being led away by police in the latest harvest of detainees after a last-second decision to put her liberty on the line in opposition to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

[Keystone XL pipeline] Ex-Tory message maven tailors his spin to oil sands – by Colin Freeze (Globe and Mail – July 28, 2011)

September 8, 2011

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.

Alykhan Velshi, a 27-year-old who established himself in Ottawa as a master of messaging and a crucial cog in the Conservative machine, has a new job – he’s out to polish the image of Canada’s oil sands in the minds of freedom-loving people everywhere.

“When petroleum reserves were deposited around the world, it is unfortunate that they were all given to the world’s bastards,” he said. “With the exception of Canada, most of them are with the world’s bastards. You need to recognize that when you are buying oil.”

Never known for subtlety, Mr. Velshi now runs EthicalOil.org, a blog set to relaunch on Thursday. A few months ago, he was the communications director for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. He was also an important part of the Tory war room that steamrolled the Liberal Party en route to victory.

[Asbestos] The Story of a Dead Sailor, His Widow and a Bunch of Boneheaded Politicians – by Serge Schmemann (New York Times Editorial Observer – September 3, 2011)

September 4, 2011

The New York Times has the third highest weekday circulation in the United States (after USA Today and the Wall Street Journal) and is one of the country’s most influential newspapers.

Robert Keyserlingk died in December 2009 of mesothelioma, a cancer usually caused by exposure to asbestos. Mr. Keyserlingk, a neighbor and good friend on the Canadian mountain lake where we spend our summers, had been a history professor and a wonderful gardener. Forty years earlier, he was a cadet in the Canadian Navy, in an era when the plumbing and wiring in naval vessels were routinely coated with asbestos.

In the 2 1/2 years he struggled with his disease, he and his wife, Michaela, a textile conservator, became involved in the political campaign against the continued mining of asbestos, specifically chrysotile, or white asbestos, in Canada, and its export to the third world.

This summer, to Mrs. Keyserlingk’s surprise and in a rather peculiar way, her continuing campaign was thrust into the limelight. The Conservative Party, which is currently governing Canada and has steadfastly supported asbestos mining, sent her a sharp notice demanding that she cease using the party’s logo on the modest Web site for her campaign. It threatened “further action” if she did not comply.

Choking the oil sands – by Chris Sorensen, and Luiza Ch. Savage (Maclean’s Magazine – September 5, 2011)

August 30, 2011

Maclean’s is the largest circulation weekly news magazine in Canada, reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events.

Environmentalists are opening a new front in their war on Alberta oil—attacking pipeline projects vital to the industry’s future

Over the next few weeks, as many as 2,000 climate change protesters are expected to descend on Washington in an effort to draw more Americans into the debate over Alberta’s oil sands—one of the most carbon-intensive sources of fossil fuel on the planet. But this time, anti-oil sands groups aren’t focusing on the vast open pit mines near Fort McMurray, which one activist memorably compared to J. R. R. Tolkien’s ﬁre-spewing and charcoal-covered realm of Mordor, but on a major pipeline project that the industry needs to move forward with its expansion plans.

Supported by such high-proﬁle environmentalists and left-leaning luminaries as David Suzuki and Naomi Klein, the protesters, who will risk arrest during their White House sit-in, hope to stop President Barack Obama’s administration from approving the proposed 2,673-km Keystone XL pipeline that is being built by TransCanada Corp. and would move crude oil from northern Alberta to reﬁneries in the Gulf of Mexico.

Meanwhile, north of the border, anti-pipeline rallies are scheduled to take place over the next few months in Vancouver and Ottawa. In addition to the Keystone XL project, the Canadian rallies will also focus on a proposed 1,170-km pipeline, built by Enbridge Inc., that would connect northern Alberta to an oil-shipping terminal in Kitimat, B.C., running through an area that opponents claim is pristine wilderness and the habitat of a sacred species of bear.

RCMP raid Calgary miner over bribery allegations – by Greg McArthur (Globe and Mail – August 29, 2011)

August 29, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

The RCMP has raided the office of a Canadian mining company in Calgary alleging in an affidavit that the company funnelled bribes into the personal bank account of a small-town Mexican mayor to ensure protection from anti-mining protesters.

On July 20, a team of Mounties executed a search warrant on the office of Blackfire Exploration Ltd., a privately owned junior whose operations in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas have been embattled since 2009, when a vocal opponent of its barite mine was murdered in a drive-by shooting.

The company has not been charged with a crime and says it is co-operating fully with the RCMP investigation, which is part of a broader effort by the Mounties to enforce Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act – the law that forbids the payment of bribes abroad.

[Port Radium uranium mining] They Never Told Us These Things – Julie Salverson ( Magazine – Summer 2011)

December 11, 2016August 28, 2011

Maisonneuve is a Montreal-based general interest magazine that publishes a wide range of Canadian and international topics about culture and politics. It is named after Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the founder of Montreal.

A mine in the Northwest Territories provided much of the uranium used during the Manhattan Project—unbeknownst to the indigenous people who worked there.

Long ago, there was a famous rock called Somba Ke—“The Money Place”—on the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories. Loud noises came from this place and it was bad medicine to pass near it. In the old days, a group of caribou hunters camped at Somba Ke for a night. One of them—a man named Ehtséo Ayah, known in his community as “Grandfather”—had a dream and saw many strange things: men with white faces climbing into a big hole in the ground, a great flying bird, a big stick dropped on people far away. This would happen sometime in the future, after we are all gone, the prophet said. In his vision, everyone died. Everyone burned.

Theresa Baton recounts this tale, recorded by the elder George Blondin, as we sit in her narrow, smoky trailer. There is a framed photo of Ayah on the sideboard. Baton is a strikingly beautiful woman, as slender and fit as her husband, Peter. They are two of the few Dene grandparents left alive in Déline, an indigenous community of several hundred people in the Northwest Territories.

In the waning days of World War II, the people of Déline and the white miners working at nearby Port Radium ferried bags of uranium ore from the Eldorado mine—where Somba Ke once sat—across Great Bear Lake. The ninety-pound sacks were carried on men’s backs, loaded onto boats and transported about two thousand kilometres south to Alberta. The crushed ore was refined in Port Hope, Ontario. Then it was sent to the Manhattan Project in New Mexico, where it was used to develop the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Few Canadians know about their country’s role in one of history’s most destructive acts of war.

Be Not Afraid of Greatness or Sudbury: A Cosmic Accident – by Kenneth Hayes (Part 1 of 2)

August 27, 2011August 27, 2011

Sudbury-born Kenneth Hayes currently teaches architectural history at the University of Toronto.

This essay was commissioned by the Musagetes Foundation on the occasion of the Musagetes Sudbury Cafe. It appears in the book Sudbury: Life in a Northern Town / Sudbury: au nord de notre vie.

Musagetes is a private foundation based in Guelph, Ontario which seeks to transform contemporary life by working with artists, cultural mediators, public intellectuals and other partners to develop new approaches to building community and culture.

Kenneth Hayes – Be Not Afraid of Greatness or Sudbury: A Cosmic Accident (Part 1 of 2)

Sudbury is not ugly, as the old “moonscape” slur has it, nor is it beautiful, as its boosters claim, pointing to the city’s many lakes. At once awesome and terrible, harsh and majestic, Sudbury lies beyond the register of ugly and beautiful. The place can only be described as sublime, for Sudbury is a phenomenon as much as it is a city.

This status is revealed by the fundamental confusion about its name, which never makes clear what is nominated: the city itself, the larger region, the Sudbury Basin on which the city is perched, the fact of the mines, or even the reputation of the place. Without proper limits, one signifier encompasses all of these identities.

Sudbury is, in the final analysis, the slow unfolding of a cosmic accident. The nickel ore that fuelled the city’s development was deposited in a vast cataclysm, the impact of a meteorite that would have destroyed all life on earth — had there been any. But this occurred so long ago that life did not yet exist on earth. (1) The shock was so great that seismologists can still detect its faint reverberation — planet Earth literally quivers with the pangs of Sudbury’s birth.

Ribbon cut for Vale Living with Lakes Centre – by Rita Poliakov (Sudbury Star – August 26, 2011)

August 26, 2011

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

John Gunn may have won the battle, but now he’s focused on the war. The director of the Vale Living With Lakes Centre, which was officially opened on Thursday, first started raising funds for the building in 1992.

Since then, the Co-operative Freshwater Ecology Unit at Laurentian University has tried to build a new centre three times. Instead, the unit’s researchers operated out of several small white houses by Ramsey Lake.

“I feel like I’m (still) fighting. The work is ahead of us. The most important thing now is the work itself,” said Gunn, the Canada Research Chair in Stressed Aquatic Systems at Laurentian.

“I think we’re just starting out. This is the time to be looking ahead. How do we attract those new young researchers?”

Glitter of gold, jitters over cyanide divide Romanians on Gabriel-owned project – Alison Mutler (Globe and Mail – August 22, 2011)

August 22, 2011

ROSIA MONTANA, ROMANIA — This is fairy tale land and there’s even a pot of gold buried beneath it. But not everyone’s happy.

With the precious metal at an all-time high, a Canadian company is eager to start blasting out mountains and demolishing parts of the ancient Romanian town of Rosia Montana to build an open-cast mine where 300 tons of gold and 1,600 tons of silver are buried.

The plan, which would use cyanide in the extraction process, faces fierce opposition from ecologists and many locals who want to preserve the region’s unique heritage.

Transylvania is a land of majestic mountains, never-ending forests, and meadows dotted with cones of hay, horse-drawn carts and medieval churches – scenes straight out of Grimms’ fairy tales.

Movie looks at Timmins’ first 100 years Movie looks at Timmins’ first 100 years – by Kristine MacDougall (Timmins Daily Press – July 20, 2011)

April 5, 2015July 20, 2011

The Daily Press is the newspaper of record for the city of Timmins.

The history of Timmins is coming to the big screen.

Timmins: The first 100 is an independently produced film about the city’s rich history. “It struck me about three or four months ago that we’re having the 100th year celebrations and there was no film,” said producer Kevin Vincent.

The 90-minute movie provides a look at life in the Porcupine Camp, the men and women who fought their way into the camp in search of gold, and the devastating 1911 fire. It also chronicles the bitter labour battles, the folklore of hotel life, Timmins rich multicultural heritage, and Timmins highgrading industry, and related crime, as a result of gold mining in the area.

Work and research for the movie was compiled over the last two and a half decades.