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Sudbury History

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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Sudbury Reforestation-Marking an ‘amazing’ makeover – by Mary Katherine Keown (Sudbury Star – July 8, 2022)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Jane Goodall and Justin Trudeau plant 10 millionth tree in Sudbury

Bell Park played host this week to a living legend, and her stuffed monkey friend.Dr. Jane Goodall was in town on Thursday, along with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to plant the 10 millionth tree in Greater Sudbury’s 40-year-long regreening campaign.

“For many years I’ve been travelling around the world, talking about the importance of protecting our beautiful environment,” Goodall told the large crowd assembled at the William Bell gazebo.

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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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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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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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It’s been 50 years since NASA’s Apollo 16 astronauts walked on Sudbury – by Colleen Romaniuk (Sudbury Star – July 9, 2021)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

They were here to train for their moon mission

This summer marks 50 years since NASA dispatched the Apollo 16 astronauts to Sudbury for field training ahead of their trip to the moon. Commander John Young and pilot Charles Duke, whose spacecraft would launch from Cape Canaveral less than a year later on April 16, 1972, teamed up with experts from Inco to study Sudbury’s impact crater and its unique geological structures.

NASA hoped that the field training, which took place from July 7 to 9, 1971, would prepare the astronauts for lunar surface experiments. It turns out, the excursion didn’t prepare them as much as they’d hoped.

“We were very interested, at the time, in trying to work up the geology of the moon. The great debate in the literature prior to our first moon landing was how much of the moon was formed by volcanic activity and how much of it was formed by impact structures,” said Michael Dence.

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” THE STORY OF NICKEL ” 1930s INCO MINING PROMO FILM FROOD MINE SUDBURY, ONTARIO, CANADA

This 1930s black & white educational/promotional film tells “The Story of Nickel”. It was produced by INCO, the International Nickel Company, Ltd., now known as Vale Canada, Limited. INCO as founded following the discovery of copper deposits in Sudbury, Ontario. During World War II, Inco’s Frood-Stobie Mine Mine produced 40% of the nickel used in …

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Then and Now: In 1923, Ernest Hemingway called Sudbury’s moonscape ‘the weirdest country I have ever seen’ – by Vicki Gilhula (Sudbury.com – April 22, 2021)

https://www.sudbury.com/

The famed writer came north on assignment for The Toronto Star, hoping to get the scoop on a coal deposit

Ernest Hemingway is a towering figure of 20th century American literature and his celebrated life is the subject of a recent excellent three-part Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary series on PBS.

Before his first novel was published, Hemingway was a reporter and it is often noted by biographers that he perfected his simple, unadorned style of writing during his days at The Toronto Star from 1920 to 1924.

Hemingway was just 20 when he started to freelance for The Star. In 1921, he went to Paris as the paper’s foreign correspondent. Between August and December 1923, he returned to Toronto and worked out of the King Street newsroom.

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‘A life well lived’: Veteran journalist and writer Mick Lowe has passed away at age 73 – by Heidi Ulrichsen (Sudbury.com – April 17, 2021)

https://www.sudbury.com/

Award-winning Sudbury journalist and author Mick Lowe passed away peacefully at his home at Pioneer Manor this morning. Lowe, who was 73, died as a result of complications from a fall he suffered about three weeks ago.

He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and immigrated to Canada in 1970 as a Vietnam War draft dodger. Lowe’s journalism has appeared in a range of publications such as Maclean’s, Canadian Business, Canadian Lawyer, the Globe and Mail and on CBC Radio.

Lowe is also a former editor of Northern Life, Sudbury.com’s predecessor publication, and the author of seven books (with another pending publication), as well as a former lecturer in Cambrian College’s now-defunct journalism program.

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Sudbury Basin Nickel Deposits: An Enduring and Extraordinary Resource – by Stan Sudol (July 24, 2020)

Inco World War Two Poster

Notwithstanding the historical hype of the Klondike Gold Rush in Canadian society, the two most important mining events in our history are the discoveries of the Sudbury nickel mines in 1883 and the Cobalt silver boom of 1903.

Both were the result of railroads – the construction of the Canadian Pacific to British Columbia in Sudbury’s case and the building of the provincial Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, going through Cobalt, which was for the colonization of northern Ontario.

But the similarities end there. Sudbury was built with U.S. capital and strategic technology. Cobalt was largely built and significantly financed by Canadian business and was the start of Canada’s global reputation as mine finders and builders. The two camps had much overlap but were also very distinct in their own rights.

Ohio-born businessman Samual J. Ritchie was the driving force who really started mining production in the Sudbury Basin with the founding of the Canadian Copper Company in 1886. A subsequent merger in 1902 with the New Jersey-based Orford Copper Company, which had the vital technology to separate the nickel from the copper in Sudbury’s complex ore, lead to the creation of the legendary International Nickel Company. (INCO)

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Canadian labour legend Leo Gerard on the past, present and future of unions – Interview by Michael Enright (CBC Radio – Sunday Edition – November 22, 2019)

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

Leo Gerard was 11 years old when he handed out his first union leaflets. That was in 1958, and he was living in Sudbury, a mining town. The leaflets were for the Mine Mill, the union his father belonged to.

What Gerard didn’t know then was that he would spend much of the rest of his life as a labour leader and activist. He began as a staff representative at the United Steelworkers (the USW) and moved quickly through the ranks. This summer, he retired as international president of the USW, a position he held for 18 years.

Gerard spoke to The Sunday Edition’s Michael Enright about his life in the labour movement and the future of unions in an age of globalized trade, a collapsing manufacturing sector and precarious employment.

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OPINION: [Sudbury History] For Sudbury, the signs are all there – by Michael Atkins (Northern Ontario Businee – November 25, 2019)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

It was 1977. The price of nickel was in the tank. INCO was warning about massive layoffs, and speculation about negotiations between the United Steelworkers union and INCO was that there would be no way to avoid a strike.

Financial analysts thought it would be a gift to INCO to go on strike because the price of nickel was so low and the stockpiles so high. The union didn’t go quietly. They embarked on one of the toughest and longest labour strikes in Canadian history. It was brutal. Sudbury suffered enormously. It was never the same.

The year before the strike of ’78, a group of community leaders, anticipating the brutal layoffs, began meeting informally about what could be done. They called the gathering ‘Sudbury 2001.’

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Haunted mines and UFOs: Author Mark Leslie talks about Sudbury’s unique spooky stories – by Colleen Romaniuk (Northern Ontario Business – October 31, 2019)

To order a copy of Spooky Sudbury, click here: http://www.dundurn.com/books/spooky_sudbury

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

About 1.85 billion years ago, a giant rock collided with the earth, creating what we now know as the Sudbury Basin. This major geological structure is the third largest impact crater in the world, and one of the oldest that has been discovered to date.

The impact of the meteorite resulted in an impact melt sheet containing nickel, copper, platinum, palladium, gold, and other metals – which eventually turned Sudbury into one of the biggest mining communities in the world.

Because of this history, it’s not surprising that Sudbury’s greatest stories have always been about what comes from the sky and what lives in the ground.

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