Twitter

Northern Ontario History

Will we go back? Exploring the Edmund Fitzgerald wreck 49 years later – by Josh Berry (Fox 17 Online – November 10, 2024)

https://www.fox17online.com/

OTD in 1975: The SS Edmund Fitzgerald lost to the depths of Lake Superior

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — It’s part of Michigan and midwest lore. Lost to the depths of the Great Lakes, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank on November 10, 49 years ago. We took a look back through the lens of a man who has laid eyes on the site himself.

“Because of the notoriety, because of the song from Gordon Lightfoot, everybody wants to know about the Edmund Fitzgerald,” said Ric Mixter. There aren’t many people better suited for answers on the wreckage than Ric Mixter. He’s published a 300-page book on the Fitzgerald, three documentaries, and a four-hour podcast.

Read more

November on the Great Lakes is deadly. The Edmund Fitzgerald and many others bear witness – by Jenna Prestininzi (Detroit Free Press – November 8, 2024)

https://www.freep.com/

Beware of the “gales of November” on the Great Lakes this month, as singer Gordon Lightfoot warned, because this month has been particularly deadly for sailors on the lakes for hundreds of years.

Over the last two centuries, more than 70 ships have plunged to their demise on the Great Lakes during November. Some, like the iron ore carrier the Edmund Fitzgerald, went down and took the entire crew down with them.

Read more

BACK ROADS BILL: Mitigating a catastrophe at a legacy mine – by Bill Steer (Timmins Today – September 13, 2024)

https://www.timminstoday.com/

Go to Charles Dube’s website for a well documented historical account of the Steep Rock Lake Mine: https://tinyurl.com/af8f93nj

Bill tells us about a not-so-well-known, long-term environmental solution in the making

A recent back road trip led me to discover the current progress of the provincial government in trying to mitigate an inherited contaminated area. If ignored, it would become a long-term catastrophe. It’s called a lake, Steep Rock Lake, but it isn’t, really.It now looks a little like the setting of a Waubgeshig Rice dystopian novel or Last of Us the raging HBO hit.

There are cautionary and explanatory signs and fenced off areas everywhere. Over time the former asphalt access roads are now well pitted and cracked with emerging plants. The same with the railway over/underpasses. The original galvanized guard rails are coated with a tinge of red iron ore dust.

Read more

The Big Nickel scandal of 1916 – by John Sandlos (Canadian Mining Journal – June 16, 2024)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

In 1854, the land surveyor A.P. Salter noticed the needle on his compass wiggle in strange way, a signal that the bedrock on which he stood contained a huge deposit of nickel (one of the few ferromagnetic minerals that affects the orientation of old-school magnetic compasses).

Owing to its remoteness, Salter’s discovery was ignored at the time and soon forgotten. The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway through the Sudbury basin in the early 1880s brought an influx of newcomers and a transportation link to the region.

Read more

Mining and murder: One of the world’s best unsolved crime stories – by Karen Bachmann (Bradford Today – June 8, 2024)

https://www.bradfordtoday.ca/

Sir Harry Oakes was murdered in 1943 and his story is still talked about today

Much has been said recently about the Sir Harry Oakes Chateau in Kirkland Lake. Owned by the Ontario Heritage Trust and operated by the Town of Kirkland Lake, the chateau is a monument commemorating the early days of the Northern Ontario gold rushes, the prospectors who made the discoveries and the men who developed the mines and the communities in the region.

Since 1983, the Museum of Northern History, which originally lived in the assay office of the Wright-Hargreaves Mine, has been housed in Sir Harry’s former abode. The chateau was built in 1929 after Sir Harry’s original Kirkland Lake house was destroyed by fire.

Read more

Cobalt’s boomtown blues – by John Sandlos (Canadian Mining Journal – March 7, 2024)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

Every mine develops at a different pace. The discovery of a major mineral deposits may create feverish excitement, but an actual mine may remain undeveloped for decades, waiting for a favourable alignment of investors, infrastructure developments, or market conditions.

Some mines develop rather suddenly, however, leading to the “rush” conditions that have been romanticized in popular culture. Mineral rushes may lead to riches for some, but they also can create impossibly difficult conditions for miners and their families, including poor housing, hunger, diseases, and high accident rates in the mines.

Read more

Thousand Bagger in Uranium Mining – by Tom Humphreys (The Big Score – February 24, 2024)

https://www.thebigscore.com/

Stephen B. Roman led Denison Mines from 8.5 cents to $87 per share in 13 years, tussled with prime ministers, and dominated the INSANE 20th century uranium business. This is his story.

Rage filled Stephen Roman’s stout frame as he stormed Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson’s office in 1965. Exploding over a ruined $700 million uranium contract, Roman hurled “son of a bitch” at Pearson, who would later quip that Roman was a relic, lagging “fifty years behind the apes.”

It wouldn’t be Roman’s last battle with a prime minister. His improbable rise from tomato picker to mining king is a tale of grit and the dramatic turns in 20th century uranium mining. Pope John Paul II even blessed Roman’s sprawling Toronto estate. Merging business, politics, and the biggest uranium mine, this is how Stephen Roman built an empire.

Read more

Gold smuggling the subject of a new book from Timmins, Ont. author Kevin Vincent (CBC News Sudbury – November 5, 2023)

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

‘City of Thieves’ contains 10 stories about gold smuggling in northern Ontario and Quebec

In the late 1940s a mine mill worker named Eddie Clement figured out a way to steal gold from the Delnite Mine in Timmins, Ont. The next decade he orchestrated three major gold heists, and was never caught.

Clement’s early years as a gold thief are the subject of a short story in a new book called City of Thieves, from Timmins author Kevin Vincent.

Read more

Memory Lane: When the Inco Club was the heart of the community – by Jason Marcon (Sudbury.com – September 13, 2023)

https://www.sudbury.com/

For nearly five decades, the Inco Employees Club served as a hub for community, entertainment and more in the city’s downtown core

If a person turns off Elm Street onto Frood Road in downtown Sudbury, they will very quickly come across our city’s nod to the Art Deco form. A grey building that appears triangular at first (not unlike the downtown’s other flatiron buildings) but behind that street-level facade lies an expansive facility that served the community’s needs for nearly 50 years.

Let us now step through its front doors and back in time to immerse ourselves in a little bit of the history as well as some of the special events that were held within the hallowed walls of the Inco Employees Club.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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…’

Read more