http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Sudbury’s experience of high wages and continued prosperity should quell fears about foreign acquisitions of Canadian mining assets
SUDBURY, ONT. – A couple of dozen men in hard hats and orange coveralls are gathered in a brightly lit, mud-splattered room, chatting about the type of topics we all chat about at work – the Leafs’ prospects, a daughter’s coming wedding, a deer someone saw on the drive in.
What makes these men different from pampered folks like you and me is that they are getting ready to drop more than half a mile into the earth. Once underground at Vale SA’s Totten Mine in Sudbury, Ont., they will operate giant scoops and haulers in dim, sweltering tunnels that have the capacity to kill the unwary or the unlucky.
“We’re lucky here because the depth and the ground conditions are pretty favourable for less seismic activity,” mine manager Gilbert Lamarche says nonchalantly as we prepare for the “cage,” or elevator, that will take us down to working depth. “But in other mines, the ground conditions are a much bigger factor.”
It’s a thought that tends to linger in the mind as men crowd into the narrow metal cage, the door rattles shut and we descend into the darkness at 1,700 feet a minute. Whatever else a mine may be, it’s fundamentally an operation rooted deep in a specific piece of the earth – which may be why the mines around Sudbury have become a powerful symbol for the territorial battle between local allegiances and global businesses.
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