BY STAN SUDOL
The Sudol Report
In the spring of 2005, the Canadian Royal Mint produced the commemorative Victory Nickel in honour of Canada's contributions to the Second World War. Not one mention was given to Sudbury's critical role as the source of an astonishing 95 percent of this strategic metal - essential for all military weapons and transport.
I wrote a column on that fascinating episode of Sudbury's history for The National Post. During that experience, an editor at one of the Toronto dailies asked me if nickel was still important today. I almost fell off of my seat! I patiently explained the metal is used in over 300,000 applications, the vast majority non-military.
However, that incident demonstrated how little most Canadians know of this extraordinary tiny patch of geography. This lack of historical knowledge is more acutely seen in the so called "Google generation." Many teachers and librarians routinely commiserate that if a certain topic cannot be found on the web, then students quickly give up. The same can be said for many in the media.
With that in mind, I have decided to highlight three historic articles on the Sudbury nickel mines that were written by Macleans magazine writers in 1938, 1947 and 1951. The writing is exceptional, and more importantly they give a great historical snapshot of how highly this community was thought of during those time periods.
The first article called Mine-Money Triangle is written by Leslie MaFarlane and was published on April 15, 1938. Most people don't remember that during the Depression of the 1930s, the mining communities of Timmins, Kirkland Lake and Sudbury were among the few places that remained somewhat prosperous.
The gold mines in Timmins and Kirkland Lake were providing much needed currency for the Canadian government while the entire world was rearming for war. This caused a significant amount of capital investment and employment in Sudbury. The following excerpts give you an idea of the unusual prosperity during the depression.
"No communities in all of Canada are busier, none more prosperous. The same golden light shines on each. Close together geographically, speaking the same language of mines and mining in a score of tongues, with a common tradition of pioneer luck and labor and a common destiny in that their wealth is derived from the rock . . .
"Of the three, Sudbury has masked its essential personality most completely. The stranger is invariably startled by the chromium and neon-glitter of the business thoroughfares of these mining communities . . . But the local colour is there. Get away from downtown and you'll find it in gaudy splashes, in the back streets and sprawling suburbs, in the bleak, barren terrain of the nickel basin itself, in the Finnish, Italian and Ukrainian influences that dominate the city's foreign life."
Although the three communities were doing well for the time - Sudbury had one of the highest per capita car ownership in the entire country - the three communities could not absorb the thousands of unemployed, many who were encouraged by southern Ontario municipalities to head north and get off of their welfare roles.
The next article was written by James H. Gray and published in the Oct. 1, 1947 edition. Titled Big Nickel, the entire piece is about Sudbury chronicling the explosive growth of the community and highlighting the many uses for the metal. The following few snapshots give a good sampling of the Sudbury of 1947.
"Strategically, this fabulous nickel deposit is one of Canada's greatest assets. Given a chance, Hitler would willingly have traded the whole Silesian basin, and thrown in Hermann Goering and Dr. Goebbels to boot, for a year's possession of the Sudbury basin.
"The number of nickel-using alloys has now passed the 3,000 mark. By adding pinches of nickel, steel is made harder, more impervious to wear. It gives iron and aluminum strength. It resists acid, rust and corrosion and makes stainless steel possible. In short, it's a sort of Mr. Fixit of the metallurgical world. Don't believe your eyes for you seldom see or feel the stuff. You only know it is present by the way other metals behave."
The final article, my favorite, was written by Don
Delaplante. It was published on April 15, 1951 and is titled
Sudbury: Melting Pot for Men and Ore. This talented writer
describes the tremendous energy and enthusiasm of booming
Sudbury in 1951, as well as the city's dark underbelly. We tend
to forget how "rough and tough" this community was during the
1950s and 1960s.
 
"The city is Sudbury, the hustling, bustling hub of a
rock-strewn territory which is not only the most richly
mineralized area of Canada but of the entire western
hemisphere. No spectre of ghostdom haunts blatantly prosperous
Sudbury.
"Sudbury is a lusty, chest-thumping, non-sleeping and rather wicked melting pot of both mankind and ore which has operated as a mining camp since 1883. Today it has become a peculiar mixture of frontier town, modern city and distributing centre.
"Drinking is one of the popular pastimes of Sudbury residents and with some, a seemingly full-time occupation . . . Sin follows the old conventions, with women, liquor and gambling the big police headaches. There are about 40 arrests a year for keeping bawdy houses and gaming houses. A vice syndicate which operates on a merry-go-round basis between Montreal, the northwest Quebec mining towns, the Northern Ontario mining towns and Windsor, lists Sudbury as one of its prize bookings because of its high number of single men with cash. Police give prostitutes 24 hours to get out of town, thereafter send them to jail as vagrants."
The writer goes on to describe the old Borgia St. as one of
"the toughest streets in Canada."
 
The build-up of dreadnoughts before the First World War, the
invention of the plane, the auto industry, union battles,
strikes, the Second World War, Korea, the U.S. strategic metal
stockpile and the space race, just to name a few episodes of
world history, all needed and depended on that unique metal
that generations of miners have been digging out of the rich
rocky soil of the Sudbury Basin.
We must never be ashamed of our mining heritage and we must ensure the next generation does not forget the extraordinary amount of history that this tiny piece of geography has contributed to the world.
Stan Sudol is a Toronto-based communications consultant who writes extensively on mining issues.
The three Macleans magazine articles mentioned in The Sudol Report can be found in PDF format by clicking the links below.
April 15, 1938
(Sudbury History) MINE-MONEY TRIANGLE by Leslie McFarlane
October 1, 1947 (Sudbury History) BIG NICKEL by James H. Gray
April 15,1951 (Sudbury History) SUDBURY: MELTING POT FOR MEN AND ORE by Don Delaplante
 
