Canadiana - when I was growing up in Sudbury, Falconbridge was one of the areas where they first started their reforestation efforts. Just before you drive into town, the road splits. One goes into the north part of the town (on higher land) and sort of south to the south part of the town - the road that goes directly into the mine property. All those Poplars that you see there in that triangular piece of land was that first reforestation project. The road split because that was where the railroad once ran. The road that goes north was the original road into Falconbridge. The southern road ran just south and parallel to that rail line and was nicknamed the “New Road”. That road was built in 1962 (I think). It was built because the mine had to have a second more direct route for all the new employees coming from Garson, Sudbury and other towns in the area. With the Vietnam war, Falconbridge won the US Army contract to supply “Strategic Material” - all the Nickel to be used in the steel or whatever other metals for the American military during that period. There is a bit of info for another history video lesson.
My grandparents still live in Sudbury, and constantly remind me that the section they live in is really Falconbridge. My grandfather was an engineer for Falconbridge last I remember and in the last decade or so has planted trees in Bell park on his own. By his count 300 trees about. He is in his 80's but loves to go out on a walk and check in on them. Great respect for the land and I always love travelling up there
This channel has made me learn more about Canada than all my history classes in school. It's a shame that schools don't present the information in interesting ways. I'm sure I was taught stuff about Canada, but not in a way that was easy to remember or interesting. Love these videos, keep up the great work.
All my family is from Sudbury, they all worked for Inco. My Nona used to tell me that during the construction of the super stack, a tornado struck Sudbury and a worker was stuck at the top of the stack; he clung on to it the whole time and survived. The stack is huge, You can see it from roughly 40-50 KMs away on a clear day. Thanks for the video.
My roof blew off and most windows blew in - The story at the time was that one of the workers thought is was thw end of the world and the other workers kept him from jumping
I worked there in 1971 at Freud Stobie #7 shaft. Had the worst safety record of all INCO mines. I was there 4 months and there were 7 deaths down below. That stack was built to spread that toxic smoke out further so it polluted the area for miles. In Sudbury that sulfer and smoke killed all the vegetation for a twenty mile radius. It settled on new cars and ate into the finish. Wrecked it. I couldn't drink the water, had to be made into 'Freshy.' When the tornado went through there, men working off the scaffolding, inside that stack, laid down while planks were sucked up and out of chimney. Crazy but luckily there was only one death. It was 68 year old women living in a trailer that was tossed and toppled. As a point of interest, NASA actually practiced maneuvering vehicles for the moon landing because it resembled the conditions that were foreseen to be like the moon surface. On the Canadian nickle the beaver is the symbol you'll find there. That industrious critter that can take a dry flat scrub bush, make a dam home and before long, it becomes a productive, life filled watery wet land filled with new life. Did I mention it is a Canadian beaver ? Only in Canada, eh ?
People seem bent on doing things that mess up themselves and others. Do we really need all this industry? Arguably not. Though I do enjoy my laptop and my vehicle.
@@donnavorce8856 I don't. Not really. If home computers of all kinds didn't exist, so that we had to be more choosy about our time usage, and where we go online, and for how long, the world would be so much better off! I also take great issue to the fact that small, cheap, well made cars do exist, but the car companies won't sell them in N America! Of course the kind of person who would want 1, like me, can't afford the extra 1000s of $ to import one, so we're stuck paying more for a bigger fancier car that we don't even want! I'm 63, and I am fed right fucking up with being bullied by the Americans into living in ways I detest!
Sudbury should be better marketed as a tourist destination. It's contrasting beauty is just stunning and I have always maintained that Laurentian University is arguably one of the most underrated and most beautiful Universities in Canada which is why I sent my childern there. The French river, on the outskirts of Greater Sudbury is one of my favorite places in the world.
Sudbury is a hidden gem - figuratively and literally. Its a small city that has all of the amenities you would ever need, but its not chaotic or busy like a major city. Theres unlimited outdoors stuff to do just outside (and within) the city. And if your looking for some big excitement - its close enough to southern ontario that you can be there by the early afternoon after a morning drive. Its the best of both worlds imo, and I hope it stays under-rated for as long as it can.... Great videro but it would have been nice for them to show how much effort the city did to re green itself after the uhh, mess that we made. Its a major success story all things considered.
I work at Creighton mine and walk past the entrance to the Snolab everyday, proud to be working there😊 its truly amazing and interesting stuff that goes on underground
got to spend a month in sudbury and was realy amazed, probably one of the nicest waterfront trails in ontario, tones of trails and so close to being in the middle of no where. lots of jobs and bustling streets, nice to see a northern ontario town thriving
@@stevesmodelbuilds5473 whole country is getting that way, government and corporations filling their pockets while tent cities get bigger everywhere and overpriced media waste our time with distractions
@@gatergates8813 Yup. And let's not forget the reapeted political corruption of Trudeau and his gang awarding untendered contracts to their friends -- who then kick it back to the 'family' with 'speaking' fees.
A friend of mine, Rolly Portelance, worked in one of the nickel mines as an underground miner for decades. For fun, he would travel to places throughout Canada and the USA with his family to run 100-mile trail races. He would be in his 80s now and long retired, and I've lost rack of him, and been trying to find him on the Internet
I went to the snolab 2 km underground Best experience I’ve ever had!! We were the first mikmaq youth that got to experience that, a lot of walking but it was fun! Also I have went to that hiking trail all the way to the bridge I love Sudbury
I know this comment is 4y old, but that's so cool! I have the opportunity to be working there this summer and am quite excited. Sounds surreal going so deep
My family Joseph and Beatrice Boulay, founded the City of Sudbury. Joseph worked on the railway and built the very first residence to found the region. His brother and family moved in with him, and then he started a lumber business to build the other family’s residences that decided to live aside of them. His own residence became the first ‘inn’ that railway workers paid to sleep within that founded the City now known as Sudbury.
As a person who has an interest in Geology and History, and a past resident of Sudbury, I found your video very interesting and I was familiar with all the information listed in the film. From my geology courses I took at Laurentian, I visited many of those sites where the impact “fossils” can be located with great ease. Some of them are actually very close to the centre of the city, just south of the CP freight yards. Thank you for going a little further with the Edison commentary. I’m from Falconbridge and in our last year of high school, myself and five others prepared a history called “Nickel Centre Yesterdays”. This was to chronicle the history of the new community of Nickel Centre when the Region of Sudbury was created. NC melded the towns of Garson, Coniston and the townsite of Falconbridge into one community - Nickel Centre (and now that’s gone as everything is called “Greater Sudbury”! I say the Townsite because when the Sudbury Regional govt was created, Falconbridge was a true company town. The town was still owned and ran, lock stock and Community Centre, Rink, school, etc by Falconbridge Nickel Mines. Falconbridge had to divest all the homes and services it provided to them to the Region (which they probably didn’t mind - early days of downloading I guess). The original survey for the town, done back in 1928, had to be confirmed and guess what, lots went thru people’s homes, gardens, garages etc. Our house lost a porch, the driveway/garage and a third of our front/back yard. We got it back though - but then my Dad decided he didn’t want to stay at that home and bought another one in the town. I found the newspaper article that outlined what was required of Falconbridge to divest itself of the homes in Falconbridge and their other town site, Onaping which is located at the northwest corner of the Sudbury Basin. To follow up on Edison, he let his survey claim lapse because quick sand kept filling in his shaft. The Longyear Co. then came along and picked the land. They started a shaft 100' away from the one that Edison started but they never encountered the quick sand that he had. After a short time the Longyear Company became Falconbridge. Unfortunately, the Swiss company you referenced in the video has since sold Falconbridge to I believe, a Brazilian mining company. Nothing ever stays the same. 😭 Anyways, again a very interesting video - thanks!
@@ruckuschica Yes - Xtrada bought out Falconbridge back in the mid 2000's but either they were bought out or sold off Falconbridge. Xtrada's name is no longer there but there is some other company which I've never heard of.
I lived in the Sudbury area,as a kid, before the super stack! When the winds were blowing the wrong way (rarely) sulphur dioxide would be so thick, I couldn’t see across the road to our neighbours! School would be canceled, and we were told to stay inside. My mom hated those days!
I worked in a foundry a few years ago in New Zealand, and we used nickel in one of the brews, I was the maintenance engineer and they kept a metal barrel of nickel in my stores. The damn thing was always in the way. I tried to get the boss to move it, but he said it was worth a packet and it had been mined from a meteor. Sounded like a tall story to me. But now I believe.
Edison also had a mine near Latchford, Ontario for cobalt. Also, there is a theory that the comet impact had a part to play with the minerals in Cobalt, Ontario. My basic understanding is the hit didn't just create the Sudbury crater, but pushed things up in Cobalt where there were major mines for silver, nickel arsenic and cobalt.
In a book from Oiva Saarinen about Sudburys meteor(s) it talks about the distance the fall out fell from the meteor and there's pieces of Sudburys meteor even in Minnesota.
This type of rock around sudbury makes for really awesome mountain bike trails. So many great trails to hike and ride around laurentian university. Thankyou for making this video.
Mountain bikes tear up the terrain in a way only a fleet of bulldozers could, wrecking it forever for everyone else. Maybe less so where it's very rocky, but the vegetation on every side of the path for 20 feet or so will be ground up completely. All of Edmonton's many miles of trails are totally wrecked.
Fellow Sudburian here. :) Awesome summary, thanks for this. Wish there were some mention of our re-greening though, all of the aftermath from that "blackening" of the earth and rock from SO2 emmisions and old mining practices.
I came to Lively, ON (right by the Creighton Mine) when I was 1 year old and my father worked as a mining engineer for INCO (now VALE). I love that you took the time to explore my home area! It was a nice refresher into the history of the area. Keep up the great work!!!!
Me too. Born and raised there my whole life. I have been living in Windsor, ON for almost 7 years now. lovely city and but I sure do miss winter time up north or going camping and fishing!
I loved growing up in Sudbury. My dad told me in the 60s and 70s when he a kid it looked almost exactly like the moon. One questionable memory was at Copper Cliff arena, at the end of the parking lot was a little creek run off from the direction of the smoke stacks, I'm certain to this day it was toxic waste in green and pink sludge form. I'll never forget that stuff.
I live less than an hour from Sudbury, I knew about the mines but never once had heard of the underground lab before now, amazing that I can still learn more about a place I've been to so often throughout my entire life. Thank you for the video and information.
I’ve had the good fortune of seeing the Neutrino Observatory and worked in Falconbrige in the 90’s. I guess not many people can claim to have been everywhere you showed! SNO was such a treat to see. Great great video!
I knew about the Canadian Sudbury (Google it and the original one comes up last!), but the small Suffolk town where I live in England apparently grew up and thrived around the weaving industry with many pubs paying homage to this in their ancient names. Watching this however, with a keen interest in geology and volcanology, I'd love to visit. Mind you, I've always wanted to trek cross-Canada by train, Halifax to Vancouver perhaps, my knowledge of Canadian geography isn't that good. Greetings Sudburgers (no offence - my little joke on this place), fascinating vignette and history. Fancy twinning with the original medieval one ? Sadly, half of the town's shops are empty and full of 'opportunity/thrift' or charity shops as we say in the UK. Shabby and run-down, so-called "county lines" means crack and smack here from London, but problems aside, it's a beautiful town actually. This was a truly fascinating video ! Thanks for creating it and expanding my knowledge. Blessings and Peace from England
Hey bro if you're going to trek across Canada you have to include Newfoundland (and Labrador) in your journey. Otherwise you didn't really do Canada. And Halifax is cool but don't forget Cape Breton. And forget the train. Buy a vehicle in NL and sell it in BC. I know I'm adding a lot of elements, time and money, to your journey but lots of the greatest parts in Canada aren't covered by rail. Summer's nice. Fall is Beautiful. Winter is fun (but if you don't have experience driving in the snow you may wanna think twice about trekkin coast to coast (to coast?) in it). Happy Trekkin!
@@strangelyfamiliar1729 Both E + W Coasts are must sees, and are both worth several weeks! But imho you can skip the entirety of S Ontario and all of the prairies. Resume westward travel at Calgary, Banff, or Jasper. There are things to see in the prairies, between Winnipeg and Banff or Jasper, but not enough of them to justify the cost of being there, or passing through. I know those areas very, very well.
@@sajithvs4761 getting a part time job is pretty easy. Lots of fast food places that hire all year round. Of course there are many other jobs but hard to tell if there will be some in January. Message me when it gets closer to your move, and I can try to help you find a part time job.
@@sajithvs4761 sounds good to me. I know a lot of resources to help someone find a job so I don't mind helping someone out. You can go to my youtube channel for my contact info if you want, also.
Your videos are so well made and make me love Canada even more. We have such an interesting country but there is so much people dont know about it. Thank you for your great videos and helping to share more about our countries. Your videos are honestly so well made, I dont understand why you dont have 100x more subscribers
The only quibble I have with this excellent video involves the depiction of the comet strike which put the nickel in Sudbury. Stock footage must have been used, but it does not reflect what actually happened. The Sudbury Crater is the most highly elongated major crater on earth. This is because the comet did not hit the Earth head on; rather it came in at an oblique angle. It caused the nickel core to end up closer to the surface so as to be easily mined. That was certainly fortunate for the WW II victory effort.
My home town. Born and raised. This town is fun. Must visit Science North and Dynamic earth if you come and visit. The Silver Bullet has the best poutines.
These are amazing videos-thank you. As a teenager my family lived in Copper Cliff near mines, refineries and the Superstack. One day working as student gardeners (one of INCO's ways of making things look better), we had a heat inversion. The air was sulfurous; we had to run until we could breath again. We also went a mile down to an abandoned tunnel where experiments were performed on growing tomatoes underground. They were bright red, but empty.
You can still go explore that first mine that opened back in about 1914, it's an amazing place to explore. Although it's still on Vale property, it's worth the adventure :)
I’ve been down to the snolab. It was the most amazing place I have ever visited. It’s incredibly large and cleaner than an operating room even though you have to go down 6700ft and walk through a regular dirty mine to get there.
I always loved going on mine, smelter, and refinery tours when I was in high-school in Sudbury. They let us into a part of the SNOLab (where we didn't need to shower), and seeing the whole process really makes you develop an appreciation into the science and operations going on. All of our neighbours and the majority of our neighbourhood worked in the Creighton Mine, and I lived just down the street he was filming the smokestack on. Mind you, as many pollutants are safely expelled out of the mine, there is an amount of sulphur that falls just out the top of the smokestack and Sudburians are likely to have a 10% higher chance of developing cancer, that's at least what my teachers told us. Still cool though haha
Excellent! I too examine seemingly unrelated subjects in my work and I always learn something I hadn't predicted. All things, it seems to me, have naturally poetic relationships if you really look.
Super cool video!! Was born and raised in this town, still living in it to this day. For most of my childhood, High Falls was a minute-drive down the road!!
wow what a great video of the city I call home. Sadly the super stack is in the process of being taken down, it has been a landmark for over 50yrs but it's no longer in use and to costly to maintain. Thank you for such an informative video
Also because of the mines back in the day, they would stack logs very high and place the rock on top. They would light the logs on fire to melt the nickel out of the rock. This caused the surrounding vegetation to die and our rocks would be black. Because they did this for so long and with so much lumber, the rocks became black not just on the surface but several inches deep. It will take Sudbury thousands of year to recover from this. That is why when you drive to Chelmsford most of the rock has no vegetation.
Jubei Kibagami - or drive/walk anywhere south of Falconbridge, and a bit east of Coniston on either side of HWY 17, you’ll still see the black rocks where they haven’t yet terra formed the landscape. The work they did in that part of Sudbury is quite amazing - very much like re-working an alien planet’s ecology to fit mankind. Thing is, they had to dump a ton of lime into the soil to reduce the acidity of it. While the vegetation is natural, it’s not the true natural vegetation. There should be vast pine forests but they’ve been all cut down for the open roasting process, ties for the railroad and lumber to rebuild Chicago after their famous “O’Leary’s Cow” fire.
@@Wild-Dad Yeah. That person's story is ridiculous! You can't smelt metal that way! Even I know that! And it's air pollution from the real smelters that destroyed the vegetation and blackened the rocks. BTW. In 1982 I flew over the entire northern part of the 4 western provinces one very long, very sad day. There was nowhere that had not been clear cut, all the way to Vancouver Island, for as far as the eye could see at 30,000 feet. I could not believe my eyes! There were patches of trees, but patches do not make a forest, or provide a habitat for living things. Due to lack of trees, it all desertifies. I've cried for weeks, months, and now 40 years, with the realization of what we have lost. There is no Northern Boreal Forest in Canada, though documentaries still claim there is. It was already gone in 1982, forty years ago. What little does remain is only there to fool us into thinking that there is more, like the trees facing the highways, for the sake of tourists, while the opposite mountain sides are bald, for miles and miles. I didn't see any of Ontario, Quebec, or places east, but I have no doubt the same thing has occurred there too.
The FBI agents must be listening to me again because I was just talking about how I moved back home to Sudbury, then this video shows up! Enjoyed it tho :^))
This was wonderful. I will be sharing this on Shoutout Sudbury later today; I hope it brings a spike in views, as Sudburians should all watch this. There's so much to learn. Thank you for doing this.
Very interesting!!! you earned my subscription. I hope you continue to bring interesting historical videos like this. This touched me as I am from sudbury. Keep it up!!!
I was born in Sudbury on Regent street in April of 1950. My uncle Bud was above ground plant foreman for many years and we visited my uncles cabin on Long Lake for many years every summer for a couple of weeks. Nice to know a bit more of the special history of my birthplace. Thank you.
Excellent production value and presentation, I agree with the other comments - you guys need more subs! Also at 6:58 you can see some of our Swagelok Products :)
In the early 70's we traveled through Sudbury and we stopped at the museum and they told us that the reason no trees grow around the area was because of the meteorite only latter did the storey change that pollution for the mine killed the trees
I am so happy that I found this channel. I enjoy the stories and will be sharing them with as many friends and family as I can. I have become a patreon supporter. This is the first channel I have done this for. :)
