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Northern Ontario History

Train 185: TVO documentary missed some important points – by R.I. Macdonald (Sudbury Star – April 19, 2023)

 

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

R.I. Macdonald is professor Emeritus, University of Manitoba and co-author of The Heart of New Ontario.

‘You will notice that several of the above points relate to the important role played by Indigenous individuals in the development of this part of Northern Ontario’

I watched the TVO documentary on Train 185 last evening and congratulate the production team for an interesting documentary. I offer the following points that would have been useful and interesting to have included.

The photography was excellent. The aerial photography in particular provided a dramatic, unique visual description of the Height of Land region of Northern Ontario. The fact that the two-car train photographed from the air was not the three-car train on the ground level shots was obvious and a bit disconcerting.

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Remembering Attilio. He was good for a blast (Soo Today – April 16, 2023)

https://www.sootoday.com/

Attilio Berdusco was recognized for engineering a mammoth pillar blast in the Helen Mine in 1955 and he was a pillar of his community

Some men gain recognition for building their communities. Some get notoriety from destroying things. Attilio Berdusco got to do both; in the best possible way. Attilio (or Tillio as he was often called), was born in the Sault in 1929 to Reno and Pauline Berdusco and was the oldest of eight children.

The family lived at the Parkhill Mine until 1939. When the gold mines closed, Tillio’s father then sought work at the Sinter Plant in Wawa while his mother ran a general store at the corner of Broadway and Laurier in Wawa. Attilio’s name appears in the Sault Star regularly in childhood as he excelled at both sports and academics.

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Gold discoveries provided foundation for Porcupine Camp in 1912 – by Karen Bachmann (Timmins Daily Press – February 10, 2023)

https://www.timminspress.com/

Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum and a writer of local history.

Great moments from 1912: Robert Scott reached the South Pole on Jan. 17th (Roald Amundsen beat him by a month, arriving at the pole in December 1911); New Mexico became the 47th state in the US; the Olympic Games took place in Stockholm, Sweden; the Titanic set sail (and sank); the African National Congress was founded as the South African Native National Congress; Edgar Rice Burrows wrote “Tarzan of the Apes”; Casimir Funk introduced the concept of vitamins and Carl Jung published “Psychology of the Unconscious”.

And locally, results started to add up from those gold discoveries made in New Ontario during the rush of 1909. Evidence of this growth is apparent in the items featured in early editions of the Porcupine Advance newspaper.

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Memory Lane: Old Steelworkers Hall a community gathering spot – by Vicki Gilhula (Sudbury.com – July 13, 2022)

https://www.sudbury.com/

The structure, built by the Legion in the 40s and sold to USW in the 60s, was destroyed in a fire in 2008

For more than 40 years, the handsome Steelworkers Hall on Frood Road was a place where men and women came together for union solidarity and camaraderie. The building was home to Steelworkers Local 6500 and Local 2020. In addition to union offices, it was a centre of union activities and social events.

Union members enjoyed beer, pickled eggs and conversation downstairs in the beer hall. The Steelworkers Hall was also popular with the community at large as a venue for weddings, celebrations, banquets, gala events and trade shows.

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How the “demon metal” gave Canadian mining a bad name – by Marilyn Scales (Canadian Mining Journal – June 2, 2022)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

The word cobalt came from kobold, a variant of the German word kobalos, a satyr and shape-shifter of Greek mythology who mocked the work of humans. By the Middle Ages, miners in the dark depths reported that touching the metal burned their fingertips, a sure sign that demons were watching them. And so the “demon metal” it became.

Cobalt – with a capital C – is synonymous with the silver rush of over a hundred years ago in northern Ontario. The town of Cobalt got its start when silver was discovered in 1903, and that mining rush outshone any gold rush in the previous 200 years.

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Timmins was set to prove this mining town would be here for the long haul – by Karen Bachmann (Timmins Daily Press – May 20, 2022)

https://www.timminspress.com/

“Near Famine Point at the Porcupine!” was the lead headline from the Toronto Globe newspaper in May 1912. The paper got all hot and bothered because word went out that the trestle bridge at Boston Creek was out and train service, on which the North depended so readily, was cut off and everyone in the Porcupine was in dire straits.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth, and the editor of the Porcupine Advance took it upon himself to defend the honour of the North.

“The unkind and ungallant reference to our dependency on Southern Ontario is an impertinent insinuation especially so coming from a Canadian journal styling itself ‘Canada’s national newspaper…’

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Devil Copper: War and the Canadian Nickel Industry, 1883–1970 – by Scott Miller (National Defence Canada – Winter 2019)

http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/

Located in the heart of northeastern Ontario, the city of Sudbury is often referred to as the ‘Nickel Capital’ for its historic relationship with this particular metal. Indeed, by the eve of the First World War, it had become the world’s leading producer of nickel, and by 1950, its share of the global supply peaked at 95 percent.1

Also known as ‘devil copper,’ worldwide demand for nickel remained strong throughout much of the 20th Century, largely as a result of its far-reaching military applications. While the citizens of Sudbury are generally well aware of this mining legacy, others may not be as familiar with the significance of nickel in Canadian political and military history. This is hardly surprising. As renowned historian J.L. Granatstein once asserted, there is a lack of “…serious scholarship on Canada’s industrial [war effort],” including its mineral and mining sectors.2

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Nickel Closest Thing to a True ‘War Metal’ – by Stan Sudol (Sudbury Northern Life – February 23, 2007)

Please note that this column is from 2007 – Stan Sudol

The metallic “Achilles heel” for any military and navel production has always been nickel

Sudbury was definitely going to be “nuked” by the Russians. At least that was our conclusion back in 1976 when I worked at CVRD Inco’s Clarabell Mill for a year.

During one graveyard shift, a group of us were talking about Cold War politics and atomic bombs. We all agreed that if there ever was a nuclear war between the Americans and Russians then there must have been one Soviet “nuke” with our community’s name stenciled on it. We all laughed a little nervously, but there was also some pride in knowing Sudbury was important enough to get blown-up in the first round of missiles.

Access to strategic materials has always affected the destinies of nations. The Romans conquered Britain in AD 43 to control valuable tin deposits in Cornwall. Combining tin with copper produces bronze, a more valuable and militarily important alloy. Ancient Chinese metallurgical expertise with iron and steel allowed the Middle Kingdom to become a dominate military and economic force during the prosperous Han dynasty.

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Northern Ontario’s mining memorials tell a tale of hard-fought labour protections – by Bill Steer (Bay Today – January 19, 2022)

 

https://www.baytoday.ca/

Back Roads Bill Steer is the founder and remains the GM of the Canadian Ecology Centre. He teaches part-time at Nipissing University (Schulich School of Education) and Canadore College. His features can be found across Village Media’s Northern Ontario sites.

With the help of the region’s scholars, Back Roads Bill recounts the struggles and horrific working conditions endured by early miners and the reason we should all remember them

It is part of a history lesson we know little about, so perhaps we need a little schooling. Envision hard rock miners, once toiling far underground in dark, cramped and dangerous conditions; it was arduous and risky work.

They emerged tired and dirty at the end of their shifts, walking back to small wood-sided homes and their immigrant families. Mining, along with forestry, created what was then called ‘New Ontario,’ — what we know as Northern Ontario.

Indigenous mining in the north began after the last period of glaciations, people of the Plano culture moved into the area and began quarrying quartzite at Sheguiandah on Manitoulin Island. Mining is an important economic activity in Northern Ontario. It has been since the first copper mines at Bruce Mines in 1846 and Silver Islet in 1868.

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Book Review–Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower – by Daniel Sekulich (Northern Miner – February 17, 2022)

Global mining news

As work continues to create a greener, cleaner future for the planet, the rush to find critical minerals that will spearhead the transition away from fossil-fueled energy has taken on a greater urgency. Explorers and developers are actively seeking out new sources of nickel, copper and lithium throughout the globe.

And then there’s cobalt, a metal whose ability to store energy has already made it crucial for everything from laptops to smartphones, and gives it an even more important role in the green revolution. This has led to a renewed interest in securing sources of the metal across Canada, including around the namesake community of Cobalt, in northern Ontario.

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Memory Lane: How Sudbury’s speed-skating miners edged out the competition in the 1930s – by Vicki Gilhula (Sudbury.com – February 9, 2022)

https://www.sudbury.com/

We’re digging into the region’s Olympic history this week in honour of Canada’s athletes currently competing at the Beijing Olympics

Every four years, Sudbury fans ignore the politics to enjoy the Olympics spectacle and cheer on athletic excellence.

With all eyes on the XXIV Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, China, this month, it is fun to remember homegrown heroes who have competed for Canada with the whole world watching.

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Charlie Angus’s novel Cobalt reveals reality of mining – by Jamie Portman (Canada.com – February 2022)

https://o.canada.com/

“There’s something absolutely beguiling about these great mineral rushes,” Angus says.

There were the cockroach races that saw miners betting as much as a $1,000 on the outcome. There was the day vaudeville performer Daisy Primrose walked down the street in Harem pants, a new form of female apparel so scandalous that it had been condemned by the Pope. There’s even an appearance by a dog named Bobbie Burns who may well have been the inspiration for Hollywood’s most celebrated canine star.

So if Charlie Angus had wanted, he could easily have confined himself to delivering a robust history of Cobalt, the fabled Northern Ontario mining town in which the New Democrat MP has long lived. But although he is a born storyteller with a passion for popular history that matches the best of Pierre Berton and James H. Gray, Angus had a lot more on his mind when he set out to write his latest book, Cobalt.

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Charlie Angus’ new book a reflection on rough, complex history of Cobalt, Ont. (CBC News Sudbury – February 6, 2022)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/

Town was ‘somewhere between a squatter’s camp and elegant cosmopolitan power’ Angus says

The rich, colourful history of Cobalt, Ontario is the subject of Charlie Angus’ new book Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower. In it, Angus traces Cobalt’s history– the community was one of Canada’s first boomtowns– and the eccentric characters who dotted its landscape .

“There was a great description of Cobalt in 1909,” Angus said. “It looked somewhat like a cross between a wild west town and a medieval slum.” The town had its own banks, theatres and bordellos, Angus said, and even had a stock exchange long before Vancouver or Toronto.

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The dark side of Cobalt, the digital age’s miracle metal – by Charlie Angus (Toronto Star – January 30, 2022)

https://www.thestar.com/

Charlie Angus looks at lessons from an early 20th-century mining rush. An excerpt from the new book by the New Democrat MP for Timmins—James Bay, “Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower.”

The world is searching for cobalt, the miracle ingredient of the digital age. The metal’s capacity to store energy and stabilize conductors has made possible the proliferation of rechargeable batteries, smartphones and laptops. More crucially, in the face of catastrophic climate change, cobalt offers the hope of a clean-energy future.

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Sudburians recall how the city banded together to weather the 1958 Inco strike – by Vicki Gilhula (Northern Ontario Business – December 24, 2021)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Just days before Christmas in 1958, some 14,000 Sudbury miners and their families got the news they had been praying for: the three-month strike at Inco was over. Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Local 598 president Mike Solski announced an agreement had been reached with Inco.

A three-year contract and a six-per-cent wage increase over three years was offered. This amounted to pennies on the hourly wage at the time of less than $3, but union leaders considered the settlement a victory.

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