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Opinion: Outside the ‘Blackened Horseshoe,’ Sudbury District has always been a sea of green

Given Sudbury’s reputation as a blackened and ruined landscape, why would anyone have chosen to live here? Because, says historian Dieter Buse, that reputation is only partially deserved
SudburyAerialSized
Sudbury from the air. (File)

In 1970, I met my new neighbour in Minnow Lake, a working class area of Sudbury. We were actually the “new” people, because our neighbours had lived there for decades. The street reflected the ethnic mix of Sudbury: an Irishman married to a French widow, a Finn, an Italian, a Belgian and a Polish family had us surrounded.

We used our little house as a base from which to get out of the ugly city. With friends of German background, we frequently went to lakes and waterfalls on the Killarney road, or to High Falls and Windy Lake. We hiked, picnicked, swam, canoed and fished in the large playground.

Once the Irish neighbour knew that I appreciated nature, he invited me to his camp on an island in Kukagami Lake. Perhaps he invited me because when he was redoing his roof after adding a storey to his house, I had grabbed my hammer and gyprock knife and participated. 

He discovered that I had training as a roofer and construction worker. At his camp, his A-frame needed some work, and I benefited from loons dancing in the nearby bay, sliding down waterfalls at the end of the lake and fishing.

His island had fairly large trees (40 to 60 feet; 15 metres) just like the area surrounding Kukagami Lake. Soon I discovered that, similar to the areas south and west of Sudbury towards Killarney or Fairbanks, the landscape was more like what the Group of Seven painted: few Emily Carr majestic forests, but lots of good-sized pines, scrubby oak and many waterfalls. Much picturesque and rough, though well-covered terrain, surrounded what I coined for Sudbury city: the Blackened Horseshoe (to contrast with the Golden one of Niagara). 

Outside the city, and as close to Sudbury as the south end of Long Lake, Horseshoe Lake, Whitefish, Windy Lake, Fairbanks, or Kukagami, no blackened rocks marred the landscape and much second-growth forest existed. Some of the vegetation may have been scraggly, but it was merely reflective of what can grow on limited soil after the first removal by clearcut timbering.

Within the region as a whole, the Blackened Horseshoe, with its opening part facing to the northeast, was relatively small. That is often forgotten, just as is the normal landscape around and beyond it, in those writings that concentrate on the polluted, devastated area. 

Sudburians escaped to their “camp” (not cottage) for obvious reasons and most did not have to go far to enjoy the bush or the provincial parks, noticeably mostly towards the north, south or west.

At Kukagami, I learned more about the region outside the horseshoe. The lodge on the lake offered fish-fries nearly every evening and some of the people at those gatherings came from Ohio. 

Why would people come that far to a place then known across Canada as a barren wasteland? That, however, is the point: it was not. Just outside the devastated area were many colourful rock outcroppings, lots of trees and lakes with diverse species of fish.

 

050521_BUSE-column-sportsmans-lodgePoster from 1950s. By Courtesy Jason Marcon

Those tourists from Ohio came to the lodge year after year, from the 1950s through the 1970s, and some started to stay longer than a couple of weeks by building rough abodes, their own camps. Despite the city’s reputation, they returned and some settled in for the long haul by establishing and improving a place to escape in the wilderness. Those in the know came to Sudbury, that is, they did not avoid it, or more precisely came to the Sudbury region and avoided the scarred city.

What needs to be understood and underscored is the limited size of the devastated area. One of the first studies of Sudbury’s destroyed area, done in the mid-1940s, included a map of the relatively limited area affected by the smelting. 

The authors R. H. Murray and W. R. Haddow may have been pioneers with their “First Report…on the sulphur smoke conditions,” (1945) based on a thorough study of the region. You can see an image from the report below.

050521_sulphur-smoke-patternsulphur smoke pattern Sudbury basin 1945. By Report: R.H. Murray & W.R. Haddow

Another published in 1969-70 illustrates the same from a study using 1964-68 data on fumigation patterns:

 

050521_sulphur-smoke-pattern-1969-70Supplied

Few of the studies lauding the restoration or regreening of Sudbury provide much indication of the geographic context, which can be roughly defined as:

  • The District of Sudbury is about 40,000 sq. km
  • Greater Sudbury is 3200 sq. km
  • Affected area is about 1800 sq. km. or so

Depending on years, this guess is based on the 1945 report, namely the time when roast beds (kilometre long huge trenches filled with a five-metre depth of logs, sulphuric ore dumped on top and lit to burn off the sulphur) had caused the most damage.

How big was the devastated area? Perhaps 600 sq km? That estimate assumes that the burned strip was about 10 km wide by 60 km long, and may in fact be high. With heightened nickel production during every war of the 1950s to 1970s, the pollution increased, but mostly was spread through the chimneys and was not as intense on the ground as during the period of roast beds.

Hence, within the Sudbury District, less than five per cent of the area was affected, even in Greater Sudbury probably only half the area could be considered impacted.

The city was always surrounded by much unspoiled nature, aside from the small areas affected by timbering, roads and railways. That the impacted and devastated area happened to be in the urban centre is what made it notable, though its extent had definite limits. 

That it is a confined area is mostly overlooked, as studies repeatedly use the same pictures of the same places within the city to demonstrate the dramatic destruction and recovery. Mostly, the larger geographic and historical situation is omitted.

In response to a person who claimed how horrid it had been in Sudbury before regreening, I suggested that he needed to define Sudbury, because in an important sense, Sudbury had not changed at all. He assertively asked where I was referring to and I responded: I mean going 20 kms in any direction from the city’s downtown except east (there it would be further) took you out of the devastated area. 

Did not Fairbanks or Windy Lake provincial parks offer places to escape? Did not Long Lake or Penache Lake offer resort-like areas? Why were lodges on Wanapitei, Kukagami, Ashagami, Penache, and so many other lakes drawing American tourists?

 

050521_BUSE-column-lakeland-lodgeSupplied

Where did Sudburians locate their camps? Sensibly, on lakes not affected by the fumes. 

Those talking about the regreening issue have long been confused about the relationship between the limited devastated area and the normal northern area around it, because the barren strip is what people experienced in town, especially as the slag heaps and devastated strip abutted main transportation routes. Yet it was easy to get away and still be in the Sudbury area.

The entire Sudbury District had timber cut from about 1880 to 1930. Much of the region (Kukagami, Whitefish) is being designated for or has already undergone a second growth cut. How was that possible? It was and is possible because the devastated area was small and beyond the blackened horseshoe was the playground. 

Not a paradise of huge trees or lakes teeming with fish, but a normal bush land with good vegetation, wildlife and fish.

A 1939 Sudbury tourist pamphlet included a page on fishing and hunting:

INSERT 1939 PAMPHLET IMAGE 050521_BUSE-column-1939-pamphlet

 

050521_BUSE-column-1939-pamphletSupplied

This text is written not to suggest that acid rain did not ruin some lakes or that toxicity did not affect nature (animals and plants as well as forests and lakes) and humans in the whole area. However, a larger geographic perspective provides insight on why people living here liked the area. Not merely because of well-paying jobs, but because of camp life, resort lodges and automobiles gave the possibility of escape from the blacked horseshoe.

 

050521_BUSE-column-fairbank-lakeFairbanks Lake cottage of Chris Johnson, owner of King Edward Hotel, 1940s (note trees). Supplied

Thanks to my Minnow Lake neighbour and to some historical research, I discovered what long-time Sudburians knew: the small smudge of black debris existed in a much larger sea of green. 

Like other outsiders, I had missed the big picture when I arrived in 1969. A pandemic is a good time to rediscover a playground, so during the past year I reintroduced my feet to more than  200 kilometres of Sudbury’s hinterland. I did so reflecting on my neighbour who repaired small motors at Inco. 

When we talked about pollution in the 1970s, he said, “If no dirty smoke is coming out of that huge stack, my family does not eat.” 

Since then have we learned that we can have production without ruining the environment? I hope so. I do know that with technology and with changed attitudes, such as the early environmentalists fostered, we do not need to make more black smudges.

Dr. Dieter K. Buse, Emeritus, Professor of History, Laurentian University; co-author of Untold: Northeastern Ontario’s Military Past, 2 vols (Latitude 46; 2018, 2019) which won the Ontario Historical Society prize for best regional study published in the last three years, and of Come on Over: Northeastern Ontario which won prize for best non-fiction book on Northern Ontario (2011).


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