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An Unlikely Hero – Health and Safety Union Activist John Gagnon – by Adelle Larmour

This article is from a special publication call Fabulous Northern Ontario which celebrated the 25th  anniversary of Northern Ontario Business. Adelle Larmour has written a book about John Gagnon’s valiant struggles for the health and safety of his fellow worker called Until the End. Contact the author to purchase a copy of Until the End: untiltheend.larmour@gmail.com

He was a man ahead of his time. An ordinary person who had a vision and an unyielding drive to see justice done in his workplace.

Jean Gagnon, retired Inco employee and activist for sinter plant workers in Copper Cliff, spent his entire life fighting for the recognition of industrial disease and compensation claims for 250 men and their families, whom he affectionately refers to as “my boys.”

Sitting casually in the living room of his Sturgeon Falls home in a quiet neighbourhood near the shore of Lake Nipissing, he talks about the asbestos recently found in his lungs, as well as the half-inch thick lesion of nickel oxide sitting in the bottom of his left lung.

His own battle is about to begin, but he won’t fight it himself: “The lawyer who handles his own claim has a fool for a client,” said Gagnon.

For the past five years, Gagnon has battled colon and prostate cancer.

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Excerpt from Until the End – by Adelle Larmour (The Story of John Gagnon-Health and Safety Union Activist)

Adelle Larmour is a journalist at Northern Ontario Business and Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal. Contact her at  untiltheend.larmour@gmail.com  to order a copy of Until the End.

Chapter 1 – John Gagnon Introduction

Millions of tiny crystal particles hung in the bitter northern Ontario air, daring the adventurous traveller to make his or her way through them on that frigid Monday morning, February 9, 1951. John (Jean) Gagnon, son of a farmer from Fabre, Quebec in a family of eight siblings, walked a mile through that minus 49-degree Fahrenheit cold. His eyes carefully followed the sidewalk as he walked from the flour-mill area to downtown Sudbury, listening to the cars drive by, wondering how they could see where to go.

He left the Park Hotel where he was staying, eager to catch the bus and arrive on time for his first day of work at the mining giant Inco Ltd., the largest nickel mine in Ontario, and at that time, the world.

The 24-year-old John was no stranger to colder climates, but this bone-chilling frost caused even him to hasten his pace while every suspended frozen droplet felt like a burning pinprick on his numbing cheeks.

Steady employment was John’s goal. If he spent a few months working at Inco, he could scrape up enough cash to pay back money owed to his friends and buy a ticket to Vancouver. He’d already pawned his guns and rifles to get to Sudbury. A full-time job supporting this westward trip was definitely the order of the day. 

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Michael Solski Obituary – by Mick Lowe

This obituary was published in the Lives Lived section of the Globe and Mail on November 17, 1999.

Union leader, municipal politician, Liberal Party functionary, historian, author, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. Born Oct. 2, 1918, in Coniston, Ontario. Died Oct. 19, 1999 in Sudbury, Ontario of heart failure, aged 81.

Near the end of his long life, it was my pleasure to record Mike Solski’s oral autobiography for posterity. One of his earliest memories was talking his father’s lunch to him at work, on the floor of the old nickel smelter in Coniston just a long stone’s throw from the family home.

In 1935, at the age of 17, Mike followed in the footsteps of both his father and grandfather and went to work in the Coniston smelter. Mike well remembered the days when the smelter manager was automatically elected mayor of Coniston, and when shift bosses would arrive at workers’ homes unannounced demanding their annual Christmas tribute – cash or a bottle of booze.

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Mining Companies and First Nations: Many Success Stories in Northern Ontario – by Norm Tollinsky

Norm Tollinsky is editor of Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal, a magazine that showcases the mining expertise of North Bay, Timmins and Sudbury. Go to the December 2009, issue to read about the many successful partnerships between Northern Ontario’s Aboriginal communities and the mining industry.

This issue’s Special Report on First Nation Engagement in the Mining Industry sheds light on an aspect of the industry that some may have thought incidental. In November 2006, a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed a requirement by government to consult with and accommodate First Nation communities with respect to mining, forestry and other economic activities on their traditional lands. This decision changed the way mining companies do business and caused the Ontario government to amend the Mining Act to reflect the new reality.

The mining industry in Ontario dates back 125 years. That makes it either ancient or the new kid on the block depending on your perspective. For First Nation people, who have called Ontario home for more than 7,000 years, it’s mostly the latter. Mining and exploration companies staked claims and mined Ontario’s riches in most cases without consulting or accommodating the communities on whose traditional territories the activity took place. The First Nations, as one chief put it, were confined to the bleachers.

Today, it’s a different story. Mining companies are hiring vice-presidents of Aboriginal affairs, suppliers are establishing joint venture enterprises with First Nation communities and a whole industry of legal and consulting services is springing up.

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The Sudbury Experience: Report on an Oral History Project from a Labour Perspective – by Jim Tester (Part 2 of 2)

Jim Tester (1913-1995) was the former mine mill president of Local 598 from 1969-1974 which represented the Falconbridge workers in Greater Sudbury. He is one of the key historical figures in Sudbury’s labour history and wrote a column for Northern Life from 1974 to 1993 in which he shared his considerable knowledge of union struggles and socialist causes.

This is an address by Jim Tester to the Labour Panel of the Canadian Oral History Association, University of Ottawa, June 8-10, 1982.

Essentially, their struggles were for measures of industrial democracy. They believed they should have some control over their working conditions, and their lives in the company-dominated villages and towns. At the turn of the last century they did not gracefully accept the 12-hour day and the bad working conditions. Their ranks were rampant with thoughts of revolt and revenge.

Next year, Sudbury will be celebrating its 100th Anniversary. Many books have been written about Canada’s foremost mining and smelting city. None have told the story of its working people, their aspirations and their struggles, which have built the Sudbury communities into what they are today. If official historians have their way, none will be written. The truth is too staggering in its ramifications. It must therefore, be suppressed or subverted.

When I retired six years ago, after nearly 25 years service with Falconbridge Nickel Mines, I decided to dedicate myself to uncovering labour’s story in Sudbury.

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The Sudbury Experience: Report on an Oral History Project from a Labour Perspective – by Jim Tester (Part 1 of 2)

Jim Tester (1913-1995) was the former mine mill president of Local 598 from 1969-1974 which represented the Falconbridge workers in Greater Sudbury. He is a prominent person in Sudbury’s labour history and wrote a column for Northern Life from 1974 to 1993 in which he shared his considerable knowledge of union struggles and socialist causes.

This is an address by Jim Tester to the Labour Panel of the Canadian Oral History Association, University of Ottawa, June 8-10, 1982.

I was some what surprised to learn there is some questioning in academic circles about he relevance of labour movement oral history. There seems to be a pervading fear that the interviewer will lead the interviewed in such a way as to give one-sided responses that reflect the interviewer’s prejudices.

That is a real danger, but what historian can be successfully accused of being unbiased? I recall Churchill being asked how Britain would be able to justify before history the terror bombing of open German cities during World War 11. He replied simply that there was no problem with that because, quote: “We will write the history.”

There is some feeling in the academic community that its members are the most competent oral historians because they are able to exercise the greatest objectivity. That is learned nonsense. Any good craftsman has to intimately know his materials and how to use his tools. Otherwise, despite the best intentions, his work will be a failure. The creative process requires knowledge, skill and preparation in order to resolve the problems en route to the finished product.

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Jim Tester-Northern Life Sudbury Labour History Profile

This profile was originally published in a Northern Life magazine supplement “Greater Sudbury 1883-2008 – The Story of our Times” on the 125th anniversary of the establishment of Sudbury.

Jim Tester was born in Victoria, B.C., in 1913. He worked in the gold fields of Kirkland Lake, the auto plants of Oshawa, and the nickel mines of Sudbury.

The son of a Scottish immigrant Tester came of age during the Great Depression. He found work in the mines of  Kirkland Lake, and developed pro-union sentiments. He was soon black-listed by the mining bosses and had to find work elsewhere.

He eventually moved to Oshawa where he was hired on with General Motors in the tool and die shop. He became a member of Local 222 of the United Autoworkers.

After the Second World War, Tester and his wife, Doris, moved to Sudbury where he found work as a machinist with Falconbridge.

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Hacks, Flacks and Superstacks: Inco and the Sudbury Media in the 1970s – by Mick Lowe (Part 3 of 3)

This article (original title – Hacks, Flacks and Superstacks) was first published in the August 1976 issue of Content magazine. Mick Lowe is a well-known retired Sudbury journalist with a keen insight on labour issues. From 1975 to 1988 he worked as a freelance journalist, becoming a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail.

In 1977 he became a staff reporter for CBC Radio News where he helped to open the network’s Northeastern Ontario News Bureau. From 1995 – 2002 Mick Lowe was a regular columnist for Northern Life.

I make a point of watching both local TV newscasts tonight. CKSO has Steelworker president Mickey Maguire on first. Shot in his office with available light, Maguire appears angry and concerned for the safety of his members at Frood. Convincing. Hoskins follows, reading the same statement I heard earlier at CHNO, relying heavily on Harvey Judges to back him up.
With his heavy beard, bad studio lighting, and rehearsed delivery, Mr. Inco presents a haggard image, remindful of the Nixon-Agnew talking heads staring hypnotically into the cameras during the 1972 U.S. presidential campaign.

On CKNC, Hoskins appears again in the studio, though with better lighting, reading the same statement. The Steelworkers have declined an opportunity to reply, but the reporter has located sources willing to give “the other side” of the story.

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Hacks, Flacks and Superstacks: Inco and the Sudbury Media in the 1970s – by Mick Lowe (Part 2 of 3)

This article (original title – Hacks, Flacks and Superstacks) was first published in the August 1976 issue of Content magazine. Mick Lowe is a well-known retired Sudbury journalist with a keen insight on labour issues. From 1975 to 1988 he worked as a freelance journalist, becoming a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail.

In 1977 he became a staff reporter for CBC Radio News where he helped to open the network’s Northeastern Ontario News Bureau. From 1995 – 2002 Mick Lowe was a regular columnist for Northern Life.

Dropped into the safety office at the Steel Hall this afternoon. Tempers thee were high and rising over the death of James Cullen. I talked with John Higgison and Tom Gunn, the co-chairmen of the Local 6500 inquest committee. Both men really feel the rising fatality rate because theirs is the grim responsibility of investigating the accident scene, interviewing eyewitnesses, and doing what they can for the widows. (Cullen had a wife and four children.)

They show me colour Polaroid snaps of the accident. About all I can make out is the tram, a squat mining vehicle with the wheel-base of a five-ton truck, nearly buried under muck. Higgison tells me that Cullen was not crushed by the ore. He died of asphyxiation when the muck covered the back of his neck, forcing his chin against his chest and cutting off his wind. He died at the wheel of the scoop, pinned into the driver’s seat.

Higgison is shaken because a witness that he interviewed told him that Cullen was still alive after the cave-in. The witness came running when he heard the roof come down and he called out to Cullen in the darkness and the dust. Cullen revved the scoop’s engine three times to show that he was still alive. It took 10 minutes for the rescue party to clear a way into the tram. Cullen was dead when they got to him.

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Hacks, Flacks and Superstacks: Inco and the Sudbury Media in the 1970s – by Mick Lowe (Part 1 of 3)

This article (original title – Hacks, Flacks and Superstacks) was first published in the August 1976 issue of Content magazine. Mick Lowe is a well-known retired Sudbury journalist with a keen insight on labour issues. From 1975 to 1988 he worked as a freelance journalist, becoming a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail.

In 1977 he became a staff reporter for CBC Radio News where he helped to open the network’s Northeastern Ontario News Bureau. From 1995 – 2002 Mick Lowe was a regular columnist for Northern Life.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus; and we petty men walk under his huge legs, and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates; the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
-Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 11

Sudbury, Ontario – Early on Good Friday morning, April 16, 1976, James D. Cullen was killed while working the graveyard shift at Sudbury’s Frood Mine. In itself, there was nothing unusual about Cullen’s death. He was, after all, the fifth worker to die on the job at Inco since the first of the year. But the cave-in that killed James Cullen triggered a chain of events that few could have foreseen.

The Good Friday accident, an angry union, and an alarming injury rate (3,000 reported accidents in the first half of the year) combined to touch a raw nerve somewhere in the upper regions of management at Inco, a company that is acutely sensitive to its public image, especially in Sudbury. The result was a bitter, behind-the-scenes battle for the hearts and minds of the people in this city.

 

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Adelle Larmour’s Sudbury Labour History Book About Jean Gagnon – by Bill Bradley

This article originally appeared in Northern Life, Greater Sudbury’s community newspaper on April 8, 2010 www.northernlife.ca

To order a copy of the book, contact Northern Ontario Business journalist Adelle Larmour at untiltheend.larmour@gmail.com

The ups and downs of working in the Inco Sinter Plant have been documented in a new book, Until The End, written by local author and Northern Ontario Business journalist Adelle Larmour.

In Larmour’s first book, she tells the story of Jean Gagnon, a Sinter Plant veteran of more than 11 years. The plant, which separated sulphur from the nickel rich ore, operated from 1947 to 1963 in Copper Cliff.

Gagnon, who was originally from Quebec, had been working at the paper mill in Espanola for five years, before he decided to come to Sudbury for higher wages. Twenty-three years old at the time, Gagnon said his first day on the job in 1951, made him realize the working conditions at the Sinter Plant left a lot to be desired.

“You could be talking to someone 20 feet away (in the plant) and you could not see them for the dust,” Gagnon said. He noticed the other workers tended to cough a lot, which prompted him to wear a dust mask from day one, and to refrain from smoking for fear of driving nickel-laden dust deeper into his lungs with the inhalation of tobacco smoke.

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McGuinty’s Forestry Policies Lost in the Northern Ontario Woods – by David Robinson

Dave Robinson is an economist with the Institute for Northern Ontario Research at Laurentian University. robinson@laurentian.ca This column was originally published in the May, 2010 edition of Northern Ontario Business

The Growth Plan for Northern Ontario is based on a simple prediction. The majority of communities in Northern Ontario will continue to decline. Behind that prediction is an economic analysis that says the forests of Northern Ontario will provide fewer and fewer good jobs.

The analysis is convincing. The forest industry must cut costs to compete. There will be fewer mills. Mills will be more automated. Jobs will vanish. The wood industry is trying to respond. It has created organizations to develop new technologies, new products and new markets. FPInnovations, which was created in 2007, now claims to be “the world’s largest private not-for-profit forest-sector research institute.

” Wood WORKS!”, a program led by the Canadian Wood Council is campaigning to make wood the main building material for all types of construction.

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Northern Ontario Heritage Party Wants a Separate Province for the North-by Michael Atkins

Michael Atkins is the president of Laurentian Media Group matkins@laurentianmedia.com This column was originally published in the May, 2010 edition of Northern Ontario Business

Somewhere out there, just ahead of the blackflies is a small group of people across Northern Ontario knocking on doors looking to sign up enough people to bring the Northern Ontario Heritage Party (NOHP) back to life.

If you have any gray hair at all you will remember Ed Deibel tried to win some seats with the same party and many of the same ideas some 35 years ago. His effort brought no seats, but it did have an impact. Back then the objective was to separate provincial status. The current objective seems less clear.

It is no accident the province currently administers a $100-million investment fund called the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC). You can thank Ed. It is no accident the province of Ontario set up the original Ministry of Northern Affairs and Development in the shadow of the Heritage Party so many years ago and appointed the first minster, Leo Bernier, from Hudson, just down the road from Sioux Lookout. Leo was a staple on the rubber chicken circuit in Northern Ontario for years. He had a great passion for the North, but was ineffective when it came to actually getting anything done. He had no clout.

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Ontario Premier McGuinty Welcomes U.S. to OUR Ring of Fire – by Gregory Reynolds (Part 2 of 2)

This column was originally published in the Spring, 2010 issue of Highgrader Magazine which is committed to serve the interests of northerners by bringing the issues, concerns and culture of the north to the world through the writings and art of award-winning journalists as well as talented freelance artists, writers and photographers.

Gregory Reynolds is a Timmins, Canada-based columnist who writes extensively about mining and northern Ontario issues.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

Using a subsidiary of KWG Resources, Canadian Chrome Corporation, (Cliffs had quietly became KWG’s principal shareholder before the project leaked out in a one paragraph item in a monthly magazine in September 2009) Cliffs was able to avoid publicity.

What people should be asking McGuinty is two things: when did he become aware of the project and more importantly, what did he promise Cliffs to get it to commit to a project where native groups were likely to block it for many years, perhaps decades?

Cliff has said it expects to put the $800-million mine into production by 2015. It plans to spend $10 million this year on the project.

The original plan was to have Cliff’s railway link up with the Canadian National Railway main line and transport ore to Thunder Bay where a smelter and electric arc furnace complex would be built.

The 400,000 to 800,000 tonnes of ferrochrome produced per year would be shipped to U.S. steel companies.

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Ontario Premier McGuinty Welcomes U.S. to OUR Ring of Fire – by Gregory Reynolds (Part 1 of 2)

This column was originally published in the Spring, 2010 issue of Highgrader Magazine which is committed to serve the interests of northerners by bringing the issues, concerns and culture of the north to the world through the writings and art of award-winning journalists as well as talented freelance artists, writers and photographers.

Gregory Reynolds is a Timmins, Canada-based columnist who writes extensively about mining and northern Ontario issues.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is a man whose word is worthless. There is no question about his string of broken promises; as a politician, he considers his word merely another election tool.

Thus the question to be considered is this: Was he being dishonest in 2008 when he promised to freeze all development, that mainly being mining and forestry projects, in a 225,000 square km swathe of the Boreal Forest; Or was he being dishonest on March 8 this year when he put a promise to allow development of the Ring of Fire into his government’s Throne Speech?

The Ring of Fire is located about 500 km northeast of Thunder Bay and about 100 km directly west of the De Beers Victor diamond mine in the James Bay Lowlands. It is in the middle of the Northern Boreal Forest.

The Ring is believed to be a huge basin, perhaps created by an asteroid, even bigger at 5,120 square km than the fabled Sudbury Nickel Basin.

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