Happy New Year, Greater Sudbury, and also Happy 140th birthday to you, dear city!
Over the years, the area that is Sudbury transformed from a Jesuit mission at a railway construction camp along the Transcontinental Railway into the crossroads of Northeastern Ontario. For this month’s column, let’s take a look back at the Centennial (no, not the one in 1967), but our city’s centennial year, 40 years ago.
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was an elementary school student in Coniston (yes, I am that young) and one day in the school library I discovered a 112-page book, with six short words on its black cover, half in English and half in French: “to our city / à notre ville”.
Over multiple rounds of borrowing this book from the library, I poured over the minutiae of what was scheduled for that special year. This book was my second foray into reading about the history of the area (after my hometown “Coniston Story” which I devoured from cover to cover) and led to my lifelong fascination with history.
But enough about me … let’s take a look now at some of the major events among the many that were planned for the centennial year and listed across 12 pages (yes, 12!) in that commemorative book that I coveted all those years ago. In fact, there were so many events planned for those 365 days that an article appeared in The Sudbury Star of September 1982 with the title “Centennial: weekends packed with action”
Our mining heritage figured prominently in the logo that was chosen to be used on all centennial-related advertisements, publications and memorabilia. The logo featured two miners drawn in profile contrasted with one another. One miner’s headgear — a cloth hat affixed with a candle — harkens back to the simpler (and much more dangerous) times at the beginning of the mining ventures in our area. The second miner represents the present (of 1983) with his plastic hard hat and modern headlamp.
Though they represent different eras of mining in Sudbury, they could well be related, as the mining family in the Nickel District was chock full of second-, third- and fourth-generation miners and smelter workers.
In a nod to its increasingly multicultural populace, during the month of June 1983, the Laurentian University Museum and Arts Centre hosted “Strangers No More: a Sudbury Centennial Photographic Exhibition.” This catalogue and exhibition of 121 photos and anecdotes was presented to honour the people and events that contributed to Sudbury’s establishment and development, focusing more specifically on the years 1883 to 1950.
This exhibition was a companion piece to one held in late 1982 and aptly named “Towards Sudbury’s Centennial”, which featured photographs and artifacts relating to eight of Sudbury’s ethnic groups. Important names in Sudbury’s history, including: Fabbro, Curlook, Young, and Christakos, can be found within these two exhibitions.
Sudbury’s multiculturalism was even personified in the man who captained the city into its 100th year, the first Chinese-Canadian mayor elected in a large city anywhere in Canada, Peter Wong. Within eight years of our centennial, and in Wong's last year in office, “Chatelaine” magazine honoured Sudbury by naming the city one of the 10 best places in Canada.
On a sunny Saturday at the end of June beginning at 10 a.m., thousands of residents lined the streets of Sudbury to watch a Centennial Parade snake its way through the downtown. The parade began on Notre Dame Avenue and continued along Elm, Durham and Elgin streets (the most historically significant streets in Sudbury’s history) before finishing on Minto Street at Memorial Park. That afternoon, after the parade, citizens were entertained with musical performances from parade participants and took part in organized games for all ages.
From March 6-13, the Sudbury Arena played host to The Labatt Brier, Canada's national men's curling championship. This was the second time Sudbury had hosted the event, with the previous occasion being 30 years prior in 1953.
Over the course of that week, a combined total of 65,927 spectators came out to watch each draw, culminating in a win by the Ontario rink skipped by Ed Werenich. This attendance number was the fifth highest ever in the 56-year history of the Brier up to that point.
Curling’s origins in Sudbury dated back to its first decade, in 1891, when Sudbury Journal editor James Orr encouraged the townspeople to develop a curling team. The first curling match of the newly formed Sudbury Curling Club was between the club’s president, William Chalmers, and his vice-president, Dan Baikie (the original owner of what became Muirheads).
Even with the opening of the Palace Rink on Durham Street, the first curling/skating rink facility, curlers at that time still preferred to play on the frozen lakes and ponds, which proliferated around this future city of 330 lakes.
What would they have thought hearing that Sudbury would eventually host the National Men’s Championship in a modern and spacious indoor facility?
Six months after the Brier, the city hosted the 1983 Ontario Summer Games. It was the largest ever version of the Summer Games (up to that point), with more than 3,000 young, up-and-coming athletes descending on the city for a span of four days. They participated in a myriad of events, including baseball, track and field, and even water-skiing staged at 22 sites across the city.
This was the second time in recent years that Sudbury had hosted a major summer athletics competition. In 1980, the city hosted the Pan American Junior Athletics Championships, which brought many future Olympic track and field stars (including American Carl Lewis and Canadian Charmaine Crooks) to our city.
Of course, Sudbury proved itself a world-class city again five years later, as Vicki Gilhula wrote in two previous Memory Lane columns, when we hosted 1,024 athletes from 123 nations for the 1988 World Junior Championships in Athletics.
Although the Brier and the Ontario Summer Games definitely were the highest profile sporting events occurring in the city in 1983, they were not the only sports championships to take place over the course of that year.
In order, the city also hosted: the OCAA Men’s and Women’s Volleyball Tournament at Cambrian College, the Canadian Boxing Association Championships, the Eastern Canadian Junior National Swim Championships, and the Canadian Senior Men’s Baseball Championship.
These competitions, along with countless local tournaments across a wide variety of sports, made 1983 into a sports-lovers dream come true.
Now, if you were under the impression from the preceding paragraphs that Sudbury’s Centennial year celebrations were all about sports competitions, think again. They were just the tip of the iceberg.
Beginning with the opening ceremonies on New Year’s Day at Sudbury Arena hosted by the Sudbury Centennial Foundation, a vast array of cultural events of all shapes and sizes were organized by different groups around the city in order for them to be a part of the Centennial jubilee.
Musical performances and dances proliferated across the calendar that year. From January’s Ukrainian Independence Day banquet concert hosted by the Ukrainian Canadian Committee to the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra’s Centennial Ball to the “Open Air Dance” at Civic Square hosted by the Centennial Foundation to the Centennial Closing Ball on New Year’s Eve 1983, it is safe to say that Sudbury’s dance card was full that year.
On the concert scene, the 12th installment of everyone’s favourite Bell Park festival was temporarily renamed the “Northern Lights Sudbury Centennial Festival Boréal”. In the Summer of 1983, the Bell Park Amphitheatre played host to Sharon, Lois & Bram, The Nylons, and CANO, among other acts. That year’s festival was even expanded to four days for the first time as a way to mark the Centennial.
Of course, if theatrical performances were more of your cup of tea, the Sudbury Theatre Centre presented the play “Image Above Patterns Below” in recognition of the Centennial.
Even the federal government got into the act to honour Sudbury during its Centennial year. In September 1982, Canada Post announced that it would issue a stamp to celebrate the discovery of Nickel in Sudbury in 1883. In a way, the stamp was a companion piece to the Centennial logo, while one celebrated the mineral that came to define the region, the other celebrated those that made it possible.
This stamp was officially unveiled in August 1983, at (where else?) the Big Nickel. Present at the unveiling were, among others, André Ouellet, the minister responsible for Canada Post, Regional Chair Tom Davies, Sudbury Mayor Peter Wong and Nickel Belt MP Judy Erola.
The goal of this new stamp was to remind us of that August day in 1883, when Thomas Flanagan, a blacksmith for the Canadian Pacific working with a gang who were felling trees a little northwest of the new village of Sudbury Junction, discovered a rocky outcrop, the color of rust, which seemed to contain copper.
An investigation would reveal that Flanagan had not only discovered copper, but had come across a deposit of nickel. This deposit would turn out to be the world's largest nickel deposit and would transform that small backwater junction along the Transcontinental into a world-class city just 100 years later (and beyond).
Now, it is your turn, dear readers. Were you in the crowd at the Brier or the Summer Games? Did you march in the parade? Maybe you performed at one of the many concerts? What do you remember most about the celebrations that year? And, of course, do you have any photos of these events to share with our readers? Let us know your memories of that Sudbury Centennial Year as we rush headlong towards another big milestone anniversary in 10 short years (shall we call it “Sudbury 150”?)
Share you memories and photos by emailing Jason Marcon at [email protected] or the editor at [email protected].
Jason Marcon is a writer and history enthusiast in Greater Sudbury. He runs the Coniston Historical Group and the Sudbury Then and Now Facebook page. Memory Lane is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.
