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After rubbing shoulders with U.S. presidents, Sudbury’s Leo Gerard coming home for retirement – by Heidi Ulrichsen (Northern Ontario Business – June 12, 2019)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Veteran USW boss speaks of growing up in Lively, his long career (including dancing with Michelle Obama) and his lasting impressions of a historic strike in Sudbury

After a career in which he rubbed shoulders with world leaders – including U.S. presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama – Steelworkers International president Leo Gerard said he’s retiring to his hometown of Sudbury. He said he still has a home and a camp here, despite working out of Pittsburgh.

“My kids and my grandkids are getting old,” said Gerard in a recent interview with Sudbury.com following the announcement last month he’s retiring as of mid-July. “I’ve got a camp on Nepewassi. I didn’t put my boat in for three years.”

The 72-year-old Gerard, who’s served the Steelworkers for more than 50 years, has been the Steelworkers International president since 2001. His successor is Tom Conway, who has served alongside Gerard as Steelworkers International vice-president.

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NEWS RELEASE: Cambrian College Named National Centre for Mining Applied Research

SUDBURY – Cambrian College’s reputation for applied research has reached new heights. Today, the Government of Canada announced that Cambrian has been designated as a national Technology Access Centre (TAC), for its expertise in mining.

Cambrian’s TAC, to be known as the Centre for Smart Mining, is made possible through renewable funding of $1.75 million over five years from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Making the announcement on behalf of the government was Nickel Belt Liberal MP Marc Serré.

“With its wealth of experience, infrastructure, expertise and existing relationships with industry partners, Cambrian is extremely well-positioned to advance entrepreneurial activity in mining technology,” says Marc Serré. ”We can confidently expect that through its Centre for Smart Mining, Cambrian will become an even greater resource for mining technology developers and producers in Nickel Belt/Greater Sudbury, Northern Ontario and around the globe.”

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Sudbury’s SAMSSA’s Dick DeStefano to retire July 31 – by Norm Tollinsky (Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal – June 2019)

http://www.sudburyminingsolutions.com/

The founder and driving force of SAMSSA is packing it in after 16 years at the helm of the mining supply and service association.

Dick DeStefano, executive director of the Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association, was all set to retire 16 years ago when Paul Reid, a business development officer with the Sudbury Regional Development Corporation, pitched him on developing the potential of the city’s mining supply and service companies.

“We’re trying to diversify the city and we’ve got this collection of companies in the city’s industrial parks that have no profile, no mandate and don’t know where they’re going,” DeStefano remembers Reid telling him.

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Vale, Glencore both earn medals at annual mine rescue challenge – by Staff (Sudbury Northern Life – June 10, 2019)

https://www.sudbury.com/

Jean-Yves Doiron, a mine rescue technician with Vale Canada in Sudbury, won the award for top technician

Mine rescue volunteers from K+S Windsor Salt Ojibway Mine donned the champions’ gold hard hats at the 70th annual Ontario Mine Rescue Provincial Competition last week. The event was held this year at the Red Lake Gold Mines in Red Lake, Ont.

K+S Windsor Salt Ojibway Mine was also awarded the John Guthrie (Special Equipment) Award during the closing banque June 7. The team won the Southern District mine rescue competition in Goderich in May.

The Windsor Salt mine rescue team consisted of: Captain Adam Schraeder, No. 2 Al Gernon, No. 3 Dillon Perry, No. 4 Joe Schraeder, Vice-captain Phillip Schraeder, No. 6 Ethan Kirby, Briefing Officer Matt Stefanic.

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COLUMN: ‘Moonscape’ Sudbury deserves global recognition for its environmental success – by Dr. John Gunn (Northern Ontario Business – June 7, 2019)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Dr. John Gunn is the Canada Research Chair in Stressed Aquatic Systems and the director of the Vale Living with Lakes Centre in Sudbury.

Michael Moore’s recent documentary film about lead in drinking water in Flint Michigan has catapulted that city onto a growing list of places known for environmental disasters, including Chernobyl, Love Canal, Minamata, Bhopal, London with its great deadly smog of 1952, and the little town of Walkerton, Ontario, where seven died and more than 2,000 became sick because of E. coli contamination.

Positive environmental stories from specific places also exist, but like the evening news, the positive stories never get quite as much attention.

There are, however, some wonderful examples, such the Montréal Protocol and the Paris Accord, where a city’s name is forever linked to an event where world leaders came together to address global threats to the environment, such as the ozone depleting compounds in the atmosphere, or the severe threats of climate change.

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What The Heck Is That? — Our industrial Lake Louise – by Jim Moodie (Sudbury Star – May 16, 2019)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Few people would mistake Sudbury for Banff, and yet there is one spot just northwest of the city off MR 35 that I like to think of as our own little Lake Louise.

Easily spied on the west side of the road near the turnoff to William Day Construction, its surface is a vivid turquoise that has no doubt caught the attention of a few passing motorists other than myself.

It jumps out just as much, if not more, when you look at it from an aerial, satellite perspective in Google Maps, its hue so distinct from the other water bodies around it — more San Jose teal than Maple Leafs blue.

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Vale still confident about nickel prices – by Staff (Sudbury Star – May 11, 2019)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

A deadly dam disaster in its home country of Brazil has put Vale SA in the red. On the bright side for Sudbury, however, the company remains cautiously optimistic about the demand and price for nickel.

Bloomberg News reports Vale suffered the first quarterly loss since late 2015 as the company set aside funds to cover damages, legal costs and other obligations related to the dam disaster that left hundreds dead in January.

The agency said he world’s largest iron ore producer set aside US$4.5 billion and posted a loss of $1.64 billion as the company comes under strict government scrutiny that resulted in authorities freezing billions of dollars of its assets to ensure the victims will be compensated and environmental remedies will be implemented.

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NEWS RELEASE: Vale Canada and Terrapure win Environmental Leader Award for innovative mine rehabilitation project

Teaming up to solve a municipal and mining problem with a sustainable, cost-saving approach has earned Vale and Terrapure recognition for Project of Year

SUDBURY, ONT., May 15, 2019 – Terrapure Environmental® (Terrapure) and Vale Canada received an Environmental Leader Award for Project of the Year for their new, sustainable option for managing biosolids during winter months, when farmland application is prohibited and storage is complicated.

Instead of incinerating or landfilling nutrient-rich organics, Terrapure worked with Vale to develop a program to apply treated biosolids to its Central Tailings Area for reclamation and revegetation. It was the first project of its kind in Ontario.

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Sudbury: ‘Sudbury would have stayed invisible’: Dick DeStefano on his 15 years as head of SAMSSA – by Casey Stranges (CBC News Sudbury – May 9, 2019)

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

A long-time advocate of Sudbury’s mining sector is calling it a career. After 15-years as head of the Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association (SAMSAA) Dick DeStefano announced he is retiring.

The goal of the organization is to champion local service and mining equipment providers in Sudbury. DeStefano told CBC News that the group was able to create a “continual flow of information and awareness” of the sector.

“When we finally discovered there were over 25,000 people working in the industry and 8 per cent of the population in Sudbury worked in the supply industry alone and was generating something like $5 billion in sales, it seemed to be obvious to me that we really had a business that collectively was very powerful,” DeStefano said.

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Innovation centre planning $4M expansion in Sudbury: NORCAT plans above-ground addition to its underground centre to meet demand – by Lindsay Kelly (Northern Ontario Business – April 30, 2019)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

NORCAT is planning a $4-million expansion at its Sudbury underground centre to meet growing demand for the development, testing and commercialization of new mining technologies.

Situated northwest of the city in the community of Onaping, the underground facility was established in 1997 at the former operating Fecunis Adit Mine, previously owned by Falconbridge (now Glencore).

Don Duval, NORCAT’s CEO, noted the organization is the only non-profit regional innovation centre globally to have an operating mine dedicated to helping startup companies develop, test and demonstrate emerging technologies in an operating mine environment.

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Ideas: The Sudbury Effect: Lessons from a regreened city (CBC Radio Ideas – April 22, 2019)

 

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/

Forty years ago, nickel mines and smelters around Sudbury, a relatively small city in northern Ontario, had created one of the most dramatic examples of environmental devastation in the history of our planet. The nearby landscape appeared dead and blackened.

Today, Sudbury boasts some of the cleanest air of any city in Ontario. Formerly acidified lakes — and there are 330 substantial lakes within the city limits alone — have come back to life. The surrounding countryside is now green and forested.

“The big push at the beginning was liming large tracts of land,” explains Tina McCaffrey, supervisor of Greater Sudbury’s ‘re-greening’ program. Once the lime has neutralized the acids in the soil, workers plant grass seeds and, later, tree saplings. The process of diversifying and restoring the ecosystem takes decades, and is still underway.

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Sudbury: No charges to be laid against Vale after investigation of potentially toxic slag run-off – by Erik White (CBC News Sudbury – April 26, 2019)

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

Mining company currently building new drainage system to contain slag run-off

Environment Canada has decided not to lay charges against Vale for potentially dangerous run-off leaking from its Sudbury slag piles. But the mining company is currently installing a new system for controlling the slag seepage, work it says is unrelated to the government investigation.

Environment Canada refused an interview with CBC, but said in a statement that it began investigating contaminated water coming from the Sudbury slag pile after a complaint from the public in 2012.

Court documents filed to obtain a search warrant for Vale offices in 2015 allege that someone discovered green foam in a creek near the slag piles on Big Nickel Mine Road that had high levels of nickel and other metals.

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Finding yourself among the slag heaps of Sudbury (Sudbury Star – April 25, 2019)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Acclaimed Greater Sudbury writer Tom Leduc is set to launch Slagflower: Poems Unearthed from a Mining Town, his debut collection of poetry, during an event at the Sudbury Theatre centre on Friday. The event runs from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Admission is free.

More than just a collection of poems, Slagflower is the story of a fourth-generation son of miners and his journey beyond the world underground, as well as the tale of a city struggling to grow beyond its past and become more than just a mining town.

Inspired in part by Leduc’s family history, the book invites readers to reflect on what it means to grow up in a mining town and “find yourself — and beauty — among the slag heaps.” Slagflower will be available for sale for $20, at the launch event and then through Latitude 46 Publishing, Chapters/Indigo, Amazon.ca and other independent book stores.

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Returning green to a blackened landscape: Microbiologist opens MMTS week with talk on mine remediation using microbes – by Karen McKinley (Northern Ontario Business – April 15, 2019)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Nearly two centuries of mining in northeastern Ontario has left its mark with waste from thousands of mines.

But Nadia Mykytczuk said that waste can be turned into another mining opportunity and at the same time clean up the dirtier parts of the industry’s legacy.

Mykytczuk, a microbiologist, was the guest speaker at the kickoff luncheon for Modern Mining and Technology Sudbury Week (MMTS), hosted by the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation, on April 12.

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THE DRIFT: The cold, hard realities of mining on the moon: Greg Baiden Sudbury mining engineer takes pragmatic approach to space mining – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – April 10, 2019)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Greg Baiden once introduced himself at a NASA space mining conference in California as a “recovering asteroid miner.” The CEO of Penguin Automated Systems had been enlisted by the agency to bring a healthy dose of pragmatism to a roomful of high-minded scientists and entrepreneurs about the realities of mining in a hostile and extreme environment.

After listening to more than his share of science fiction stories over the years, Baiden felt he had to inject some Sudbury sensibility to the wider discussion.

So to establish his credentials, Baiden began his presentation by mentioning that his former employer, Inco (now Vale), has been mining the remnants of an asteroid impact in Sudbury for the past 130 years.

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