August 18, 2024

‘BIG NICKEL’ SHINY SYMBOL OF SUDBURY’S MINING PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

Story, photos Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

SUDBURY — You can thank Sudbury for your stainless steel sink and the gleaming baby boom.

But for decades in to the ’70s and ’80s, Ontario’s mining capital was a dirty word in Muskoka as acid rain blew down on cottage country forcing Inco, Falconbridge and other mines to begin scrubbing their polluting stacks due to public pressure led by Parry Sound-Muskoka MP Stan Darling who lived in Burk’s Falls.

The ore that fortified global defences 80-85 years ago remains big tourism business, if less so its share for industrial purposes.

During the Second World War nickel was a very strategic resource for the Allies. An essential part of the armour plating of virtually every military vehicle from tanks to ships to planes. Almost all of the nickel used by the winning side came from Sudbury. And for the next two decades Canada supplied most of the world’s nickel.

Nickel is now widely mined in many countries.

Today Dynamic Earth (“The Big Nickel”) and Science North are tourism testaments to Greater Sudbury’s beginnings in 1883 — 10 years before its incorporation — when high levels of nickel-copper ore were discovered during blasting and exaction for the national railway.

**Looking for a great summer attraction? Sudbury’s Big Nickel – at Dynamic Earth – is a perfect holiday stop for the whole family. Photos Mark Clairmont**

They offer intriguing — if too often sad — stories of plaid-coated prospectors picking through mounds of rocks to stake a claim on their fortunes; and the back-braking work of the men who dug holes, hauled rock and refined them. At one time there were three massive open wood fires around town smelting down contents. A choking haze hung over Sudbury for months for years.

It’s living local history that Dynamic North and Science North commemorate and that residents rally around — pitching in and celebrating with pioneer pride.

Both are minor job creators at the telling of the story — even as Vale (Inco) and Glencore (Falconbridge) continue major employment for thousands more in still operating mines.

**Go seven stores underground to explore what it was like to mine in Sudbury since 1883.**

Experience mining in underground tour

The Big Nickel is the big attraction. A shiny symbol of Sudbury that lets you explore the origins of million-year-old rock (“Don’t take your rock for granite.”) above ground and with a great local historic docudrama complete with a “talking” hologram host.

You can study paleo rock formations past and present and even polish your own granite stone in 30 minutes — a hit with school kids who make their own jewelry with them.

A guide an also walk you around the property where the pioneer Holditch mining family lived before donating the land.

All for $23.45.

And if you’re not claustrophobic, don’t miss out — for an extra $5.65 — on a 90-minute underground exploration of a recreated mine.

Take a lift down seven storeys, don your hard hat and take a bit wet guided walking tour to see, feel and hear how mining was carried out originally, through the 1950s and today.

It’s as real as you’ll get without a pick, a drill and a rail car — all of which are on display.

You can even stuff “dynamite” in a drilled hole and wait for the “blast.”

“Fire in the hole ….”