As Pete and Raymond Zaworonok look to retirement, will Crazy Petes carry on?

The brothers aren’t getting any younger. Pete Zaworonok is 77. His younger brother, Raymond is 72. Neither are in the best of health these days. So retirement looms, with Pete planning to relocate permanently back to his longtime home near Nelson, British Columbia, while Raymond’s home is in Calgary. Until recently, the brothers would often takes turns commuting back to their Alberta and British Columbia homes for months at a time, while the other brother remained in Thompson minding the store, Crazy Petes, their legendary eclectic small-town hardware-like store, at the corner of Hayes Road and Seal Road, with one of this, and two of that. On rare occasions, I’d come into the store while the brothers were together during a brief overlap.

Back 10 years ago, Jonathon Naylor, then the editor of The Reminder in Flin Flon and a freelancer for the Winnipeg Free Press, wrote a piece for the Free Press that nicely captured what Pete and Crazy Petes is all about:

“Need a campfire tea kettle or some high-end embroidery thread? How about a home potato chipper or military toys you thought were banned?” Naylor wrote. “A movie poster from 1991’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II or fishing tackle that looks designed to snag a whale?

“It’s all here, along with gas and a car wash,” Naylor wrote on June 20, 2013.

Pete, who was born in Germany, was living in Edmonton when, in 1967, he accepted a job as a technologist for INCO, now Vale, here in Thompson. After a decade, he left INCO to go into business for himself, running his own insulating company before operating what Raymond June 7 referred to as the brothers’ “three profit centres”: the original car wash and gas bar, along with the store he added to them to make a business trio in 1979. The car wash wasn’t open last Wednesday as a water line was still frozen up, Raymond said. Pete actually was in Thompson, but home recuperating from some aorta trouble a few months ago, he added. Raymond has had some prostate trouble of his own.

Truth be told, Pete and Raymond are two of the most creative business guys that I have ever met. When it came to customer loyalty cards, such as Aeroplan and PC Optimum Points Reward cards, Crazy Petes had the broadest definition of what constituted groceries than it has been my pleasure to discover.

Pete one time explained his marketing strategy to me by way of an illustration. He had some old cowboy belt buckles quite literally gathering dust on the shelves for years, not selling at all. One day, he simply doubled their price and they started to sell like hotcakes. The store has a collection of local indigenous music cassette tapes and CDs you won’t find anywhere else.

I have done my bit over the years to promote the wonders of Crazy’s Petes far and wide. With mixed results, I admit. In April 2022, the former University College of the North (UCN) Thompson campus librarian, Monica Mun, came back one day after making a trip with a pet to the vet, and mentioned to my then boss, former library technician Andrew Conner, that she had just seen lots of RCMP cruisers outside Crazy Petes store. “Isn’t that the place John was talking about?” she asked Andrew. At that point, Andrew may well have been advised to reply, “John who?” But he didn’t. Andrew, hailing from the Alex Murdaugh Lowcountry of South Carolina, shares something of that outlaw streak, or at least admiration for same, that I admittedly have.

I suspect we’re not alone. Hence the sympathetic notoriety enjoyed by some bank robbers, including John Dillinger, Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, Butch Cassidy, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Edwin Alonzo Boyd, or say someone like D.B. Cooper, who with his audacious skyjacking, jumped into history on Nov. 24, 1971 – the day before American Thanksgiving – with several parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills from of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 jetliner flying over the Pacific Northwest, en route from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. Cooper, an alias, disappeared into the late autumn, as he bailed out into the rainy night via the plane’s rear stairway, which he lowered himself, somewhere near the Washington-Oregon boundary in Washington State, probably near Ariel in Cowlitz County, or possibly around Washougal or Camas in Clark County. Never to be seen again.

Any resemblance to Pete and Raymond, of anyone mentioned here, is, of course, coincidental, and if necessary, fictional, too.

Raymond says there have been some potential buyers sniffing around, wanting to take a look at the books, but no serious offers as yet. It strikes me as unlikely that a new buyer would replicate or maintain Crazy Petes inventory, all inseparable, I suspect, from the Zeitgeist that is the Zaworonok brothers.

Pete and Raymond.

Gone Fishin.’

Almost.

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End of an era for Thompson, Manitoba as Nickel Belt News to cease publication April 22

By now it is no big surprise to read or hear that a newspaper is ceasing publication. That’s been old news now for a very long time. Still, when a newspaper’s birth very much mirrored the birth of a community, I think it is worth noting before it (the newspaper) passes into history forever.

Both W.H. “Duke” DeCoursey’s Thompson Citizen, first published on Friday, June 3, 1960, and Grant and Joan Wright’s Nickel Belt News, which came off the press for the first time less than a year later on March 24, 1961, have played an important, indeed vital, role, in chronicling Thompson for more than 60 years.

DeCoursey, who was based in Dauphin in 1960, through his Parkview Publishing Limited, formed in May 1960, first produced the Thompson Citizen from there. Grant Wright himself described DeCoursey as “the pioneer publisher in Thompson.” DeCoursey would become proprietor of the Northlander, Thompson’s first confectionary store, and located both the candy and newspaper operations originally in the basement of the Strand Theatre building.  Wright’s Nickel Belt News was first published out of The Northern Mail in The Pas, and later on Kelsey Bay here in Thompson, underneath what is now the front entrance of the City Centre Mall.

The two families merged ownership of their weeklies in 1967 as the Precambrian Press Ltd., with the Thompson Citizen becoming a paid circulation daily for a time, while the Nickel Belt News remained weekly but became free distribution. DeCoursey served as the first editor of the combined publications. The papers moved to their current Commercial Place home in 1970. DeCoursey had retired in 1969, selling his interest in the business to Joan Wright, who repaid him within 20 years, and moved to British Columbia.

Glacier Media Inc. of Vancouver bought both publications from the Wright family in January 2007.

The Northern Manitoba newspaper pioneering DeCoursey and Wright families had American roots. Duke DeCoursey was born in Montana. Grant Wright was born Flin Flon to Molly and Orson Wright, who were lawyers. Orson Wright was Crown Attorney for the Northern region. He was born in Dayton, Ohio. As well as serving as Crown Attorney, he was a prominent local Liberal Party member, who also served as mayor of Flin Flon between 1941 and 1943, and became a district coroner in 1942.

Grant Wright attended Brandon College and the University of Winnipeg where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He then moved to Columbia, Missouri to study journalism at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, founded in 1908, and one of the oldest and best formal journalism schools in the world. But Wright dropped out a few credits short of obtaining his degree, and came home to Manitoba to marry his childhood sweetheart, Joan Brownell. After their marriage, the couple moved to The Pas, where Grant became editor of The Pas Herald. After a year, they moved to Thompson in 1961 to make their millions on the “three-year plan,” like so many other Northerners who have stayed and raised their families in the North.

As a teenager, Grant, who died in 2002, contracted polio. He wore braces and used crutches for the rest of his life, remaining fiercely independent – perhaps even cantankerous at times – some might say. He was a proud Rotarian.

There were several key dates in Thompson’s early history: Borehole 11962 – the so-called “Discovery Hole” at Cook Lake, a diamond drill exploration hole – was collared Feb. 5, 1956 and assayed positive for nickel. The City of Thompson and the main orebody of Inco’s Manitoba operations (now owned by Vale) were named after John Fairfield Thompson, the chairman of INCO when Borehole 11962 was collared and assayed. There’s also the Dec. 3, 1956 signing of the founding 33-page typewritten double-spaced agreement creating Thompson between the Province of Manitoba’s F.C. Bell, minister of mines and natural resources, and International Nickel Company of Canada Limited’s Ralph Parker, vice-president and general manager, and secretary William F. Kennedy. And there was Manitoba Liberal-Progressive Premier Douglas Campbell driving the last spike in the Canadian National Railway (CNR) 30-mile branch line from Sipiwesk to Thompson Oct. 20, 1957.

Thompson, originally a townsite within the newly-created 975-square-mile Local Government District (LGD) of Mystery Lake, within the Dauphin Judicial District, from 1956 to 1966, became a town on Jan. 3, 1967 and a city just 3 years later on July 7, 1970.

The Nickel Belt News came into existence on March 24, 1961 – one day before Manitoba Progressive Conservative Premier Duff Roblin “cut the nickel ribbon to officially open the town” of 3,800 residents, Wright wrote a few days later on March 29, 1961 in only the second edition of our sister paper. Roblin and a who’s who of government and mining crème de la crèmes – opened the $185-million smelter and refinery, the world’s first fully integrated nickel operation and second in size in the “free world” only to Inco’s Sudbury operations. Coincidence? Hardly. Without the smelter and refinery and its 1,800 employees on that long ago day in 1961, there would likely never have been a Nickel Belt News – ditto for a lot of other businesses that would arrive in Thompson in the years to follow.

The newspaper, the City of Thompson, many businesses, and mining in Northern Manitoba have all fallen to various degrees on hard times in recent years. In 2007, nickel briefly sold on the London Metal Exchange (LME) that May for a then record high of $25.51 per pound. And in November 2007, Vale announced a $750-million expansion of its mining, milling, smelting and refining operations here, aimed at boosting Thompson production by about 36 percent over the coming decade. The cost of the refinery modernization project over five years was estimated to be about $116 million.

The Thompson Citizen had 11 full-time staff in the Summer of 2007.

Rather than expanding smelting and refining operations here, Vale would wind up closing both the smelter and refinery in 2018.

The Thompson Citizen now has three full-time staff. When the Nickel Belt News ceases publication April 22, the free-circulation Thompson Citizen will move from its Wednesday publication day to the Nickel Belt News‘ old publication day of Friday. The two papers have been publishing a merged edition on Wednesdays since 2020.

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From the McLaughlin Motor Car Company of 1907 to GM in 2019: End of an era as Oshawa Assembly winds down to close

End of an era for my hometown.

On Nov. 26, 2018, General Motors announced plans to “unallocate production” by December 2019 to Oshawa Assembly, which made the Chevrolet Impala; Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly, where the Chevrolet Volt, Buick LaCrosse and Cadillac CT6 are produced; Lordstown Assembly in Lordstown, Ohio, which made the Chevrolet Cruze compact; Baltimore Operations in White Marsh, Maryland; and Warren Transmission Operations in Warren, Michigan.

And now, December has truly arrived.

Unifor Local 222 is set to lose roughly two thirds of its membership due to the end of 112 years of auto assembly in Oshawa sometime next week. The McLaughlin Motor Car Company, incorporated on Nov. 20, 1907, began automobile manufacturing the following month in December 1907 – 112 years ago this month – in Oshawa, producing 154 McLaughlin-Buick Model F cars – called McLaughlins – with Buick engines that first year.

The last truck will roll of the assembly line the week before Christmas, as GM stops production in Oshawa of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra full-size, light-duty trucks, the last of which were being shipped from Indiana for final assembly in Oshawa. The end of production will leave about 2,300 workers unemployed. Unifor Local 222 president Colin James says the local is re-evaluating its future and potentially downsizing from its union hall on Phillip Murray Avenue in Oshawa.

GM will continue to manufacture parts and employ about 300 workers people at its sprawling soon-to-be-very-underused Oshawa plant, stamping parts for GM and, potentially, suppliers. The automaker has made a 10-year commitment to build parts, such as quarter panels, trunks, doors and hoods at the plant. The company is also building a 55-acre (22-hectare) autonomous-and-connected-vehicle and smart technology test track on the Oshawa site.

I arrived to work at General Motors in Oshawa shortly before the halcyon days of the early 1980s when employment at GM in Oshawa would top out at more than 23,000 workers.

I spent the first of five summers, beginning in July 1976 as a Trent University-bound first year student, fresh out of Grade 13 at Oshawa Catholic High School, working in the very same GM Oshawa West Plant high-seniority Completely Knocked Down (CKD) department that my dad, Bill Barker, had retired from the year before. Some of his buddies were still there; some I had heard about for years and met for the first time.

My dad worked as an hourly-rated employee for 32½ years before retiring in 1975. He was a proud rank-and-file trade unionist, a member of Local 222 of the old United Autoworkers of America (UAW).

In the fall of 1970, he walked the picket line for 3½ months in the second-longest strike against his employer since the Dirty Thirties. I remember it because I was 13 and in Grade 8 at St. Christopher in Oshawa at the time. He also walked the picket line 15 years earlier in 1955 in the five-month UAW strike against General Motors of Canada, the longest strike against the company.

While he wasn’t much fond of politicians of any stripe collectively, he did have a bit of a liking individually for Mike Starr, Oshawa-Whitby riding Progressive Conservative MP, and a federal labour minister in the Diefenbaker government for a time in the 1960s, but was truly fond of the man who defeated Starr by 15 votes in the June 1968 federal election, future NDP leader Ed Broadbent, who in his youth had been my parent’s paperboy for a time, delivering the Oshawa Times to the south-side of their rented Church Street red Insulbrick duplex, my first home.

Truth be told, my dad liked Ed not so much because of his NDP affiliation, although as a trade unionist that carried weight, but mainly because he saw him as a hardworking, honest politician; a kindred spirit, although my dad would have put it more plainly than that.

I well remember my dad’s General Motors’ ring, presented to him in 1967 for 25 years of “Loyal Service.” In fact, I have it now. My dad and mom, along with his co-workers getting their rings, took a GM-provided train trip from Oshawa to Toronto to the Royal York Hotel for dinner and the presentation by the company. After another five years of seniority in 1972, GM added a diamond to it for 30 years of service.

My first hourly-rated job was hammering large wooden crates together. It was just an amazing cavernous building that old West Plant with great big windows and wooden floors. I remember once going across the tunnel (or bridge, I’m not sure now how it was referred to) connecting the West Plant and the North Plant over Division Street. Later that summer, I hung rads in the “Rad Room” of the old North Plant across the street. My last summer job at GM was many years later in the Summer of 1992, working on the acid side of the Battery Plant.

The Canadian Automotive Museum was created in Oshawa in 1961. The city at various times has been known by mottoes that include “The City that Motovates Canada” and “The City in Motion” and, most recently, the “Automotive Capital of Canada.”

While my hometown of Oshawa is a lot bigger (and for that matter older) than Thompson, Manitoba where I live now, it was in many ways, at least as I recall it from growing up there, a lot like Thompson in being a working-class blue-collar town.

The men in my Nipigon Street neighbourhood – guys like Earl Kirkpatrick, Snow Willson and my dad – were often working six days a weeks, with overtime on Saturdays when they were on day shift. If they were on nights, they’d be busy flooding the Nipigon Park outdoor rink at 2:30 a.m. – after their eight-hour night shift ended and they went to bed – so us kids could skate the next day. That’s how I remember my dad.

Instead of going to INCO or Vale, as the company is now, and down into a mine, the men (and they were invariably men back then) I knew in the 1960s carried their metal lunch pails into the factory at General Motors to build cars and trucks. When they were leaving at the end of their shift, they punched the same clock they had coming in.

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USW Local 6166 members accept Vale’s final offer despite their bargaining committee’s unanimous recommendation to reject it

USW Local 6166 members yesterday voted to accept Vale’s final offer despite their bargaining committee’s unanimous recommendation to reject it.

Members at Manitoba Operations in Thompson ratified a five-year contract offer made Sept. 11, which essentially creates two tiers of employees – existing employees and new hires – and will extract significant concessions from current workers in terms of drug and dental benefits in terms of deductible co-pays, while new hires are now ineligible for both as retiree benefits. Current workers will continue to be eligible for them as retiree benefits.

The new contract, which expires Sept. 15, 2024, gives unionized workers a 1.25 per cent wage increase effective tomorrow, as well as further percentage increases annually over the life of the agreement.

The offer also  included a $4,000 ratification bonus payable Sept. 20 and a $2,000 benefits transition payment, also payable the same date.

The company said recently the retiree benefit liability for Vale’s Manitoba Operations is currently $163 million and is growing annually. Vale said the old healthcare plan design “had not been updated for over 50 years” and was not sustainable.”

This year’s contract talks mark the first round of bargaining between the company and the union since the Thompson smelter and refinery, which had opened in March 1961, were permanently shut down in July 2018. Since the previous contract was signed five years ago in September 2014, USW Local 6166 at Vale has lost about half the number of unionized workers it represented then – shrinking to about 600 members from around 1,200 in 2014.

There hadn’t been a lockout or strike at Vale’s Manitoba Operations here in Thompson in 20 years since September 1999 when Inco locked out its unionized workforce for 11 weeks between September and December 1999.

“Although you’re bargaining committee unanimously recommend that the membership strike down the company’s final offer, we understand the pressures that you have been under and accept your voice as our own” Local 6166 said last night in a statement posted on its website, adding “you’re bargaining committee and local union executive dedicate ourselves to standing with you 100 per cent going forward and representing your best interests in the future. We would like to thank all of you who showed support, voiced your opinion, attended meetings, read release’s, questioned the circumstances, cast your ballots and informed yourselves.

“It is time to set our sights on the implementation of this new contract and prepare for the next round of negotiations, remember with preparation and education we can achieve the best results for ourselves and our communities.”

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USW Local 6166 votes on Vale’s final offer: New hires would bear initial brunt of concessions

USW Local 6166 members at Vale’s remaining mining and milling operations in Thompson, Man. wrap up two days of voting today on the Brazilian mining giant’s final five-year contract offer made Sept. 11, which essentially would create two tiers of employees – existing employees and new hires – and demands significant concessions from current workers in terms of drug and dental benefits in terms of deductible co-pays, while new hires would be ineligible for both as retiree benefits. Current workers would continue to be eligible for them as retiree benefits. The current five-year collective agreement expires tomorrow.

Voting by USW Local 6166 members continues until 8 p.m. Remote voting is available through email and text for those who are unable to make it to the Steel Centre union hall at 19 Elizabeth Dr.

The retiree benefit liability for Vale’s Manitoba Operations is currently $163 million and is growing annually.

“While $163 million sounds like a lot of money, the union can assure you that your health while working and into retirement is worth more,” says the union bargaining committee. “This should never be a point of debate in the industry we work in. This is the cost of doing business for Vale. ”

The union bargaining committee has accepted all of the benefits changes the company proposed in its final offer except for the closure of the retiree benefits plan for new employees hired after Sept. 15.

The USW bargaining committee is not recommending members accept the contract. If members turn the proposed contact down, the bargaining committee plans “to request to continue negotiating a fair and reasonable contract that the parties can come to terms on while working under the current contract.” If members do turn down the company’s final contract offer, the company could agree to such a proposal from the union to continue working and bargaining under the current collective agreement, or they could alternatively simply lock workers out after the contract expires.

This year’s contract talks mark the first round of bargaining between the company and the union since the Thompson smelter and refinery, which had opened in March 1961, were permanently shut down in July 2018. Since the current contract was signed five years ago in September 2014, USW Local 6166 at Vale has lost about half the number of unionized workers it represented then – shrinking to about 600 members from around 1,200 in 2014.

There hasn’t been a lockout or strike at Vale’s Manitoba Operations here in Thompson in 20 years since September 1999 when Inco locked out its unionized workforce for 11 weeks between September and December 1999.

The Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers was the first bargaining agent here in Thompson when Inco workers unionized and had negotiated a contract with Inco that ran through 1964. United Steelworkers of America Local 6166 received its charter of affiliation from the international on Jan. 3, 1962 and the USWA was certified by the Manitoba Labour Board as the bargaining agent for Inco employees in Thompson on May 31, 1962.

Vale outlined its final offer directly to employees in a memo released Sept. 13. “The old healthcare plan design has not been updated for over 50 years and is not sustainable,” Vale says. “The new plan design allows the company to provide generous benefits to you during your active employment and into your retirement.”

The offer includes a $4,000 ratification bonus payable Sept. 20 and a $2,000 benefits transition payment, also payable the same date.

In response, later in the day yesterday, USW Local 6166’s six-member bargaining committee, led by local president Warren Luky, issued its own update for members:

“We discussed at the table the benefits that Vale was offering the membership, the most contentious of all concessions they brought was the co-pay component and post-retirement benefits for new hires. The co-pay means that our members will now have to pay part of their drug costs. As discussed at the meetings held at the Royal Canadian Legion on Thursday, Sept 12, Vale wants to pass on the $163 million liability to YOU and renege on that same $163 million promise. We all know that this is a concession!  One, that we warned the company that we did not think our membership would accept no matter how much we attempted to reduce the out of pocket hit to our members.

“Vale seems to continue to mislead the membership with their statements, there is no secret Vale came to the table seeking changes to our benefits, there is no secret that the union bargaining committee discussed benefits at the table including co-pay, generic drugs, over the counter etc. to identify how far and how deep Vale was attempting to take from you. We understand they are fearful that this offer will be turned down and that the union will then request to continue negotiating a fair and reasonable contract that the parties can come to terms on while working under the current contract. At the end of the day, the Union has not agreed to the offer before you. That is why your bargaining committee has not recommended this offer to our membership. The ‘generous benefits’ Vale is offering is a concession of what we currently have. It is important to understand that this is Vale’s final offer, not a mutually agreed and negotiated contract that you are voting on.

“At no point did the union consider no post retirement benefits for new hires. It may not affect you now, but after time we will be sitting at the table bargaining and find more members that don’t have post-retirement benefits than those who do have them. Do you think they will fight for something that they don’t have? That we let the company take from them????

“At this point in bargaining we have to make a choice to try get the best overall deal we can at the table. A deal that puts enough money in our member’s pockets to offset the cost of the concessions, the rising cost of living and inflation, increasing tax base due to the shrinking of employment etc. We worked very hard to do this. We respected the process and maintain the moral high ground throughout. You now have the choice to take the final offer or have us get back to the table to get what is fair and reasonable for all.”

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William Marshall Barker: My dad would have turned 100 today

My dad would have turned 100 today. Sadly, he left us almost 30 years ago in 1989. My cousin, Sharon Seager posted this picture of her mom and my dad two years ago.

William Marshall Barker, shown here at right, beside his youngest sister, Norma, my sweet aunt, was called “Bill” by everyone who knew him (aside perhaps from my mother, Pat, who called him “William” on rare occasions, which never failed to get his attention), and my Uncle Bob Barker in Indiana, who always called him “Will.”

My dad would have been 100 today if he was still alive. He died in 1989.

He was the finest man I’ve ever known. His word was his bond. I never knew him to tell an untruth, which is simply remarkable. He never equivocated. He was always straight forward, meaning what he said and saying what he meant.

He worked at General Motors of Canada in Oshawa, Ontario, his hometown, as an hourly-rated employee for 32½ years before retiring in 1975. He was a proud rank-and-file trade unionist, a member of Local 222 of the old United Autoworkers of America (UAW).

The men in my Nipigon Street neighbourhood – guys like Earl Kirkpatrick, Snow Willson and my dad – were often working six days a weeks, with overtime on Saturdays when they were on day shift. If they were on nights, they’d be busy flooding the Nipigon Park outdoor rink at 2:30 a.m. – after their eight-hour night shift ended and they went to bed – so us kids could skate the next day. That’s how I remember my dad.

I spent the first of five summers as a university student, beginning in 1976, working in the same West Plant in the high-seniority Completely Knocked Down (CKD) department my dad had retired from the year before. Some of his buddies were still there; some I had heard about for years and met for the first time.

My first job was hammering large wooden crates together. It was just an amazing cavernous building that old West Plant with great big windows and wooden floors. I remember once going across the tunnel (or bridge, I’m not sure now how it was referred to) connecting the West Plant and the North Plant over Division Street. Later that summer, I hung rads in the rad room of the old North Plant across the street.

There are other memories, of course, which I haven’t quite got around to writing about yet. Like how he used to take me tobogganing in the winter at the Oshawa Golf Course. Or before I had a driver’s licence, pick me up after the third period of Oshawa Generals games, where I sold pop and hotdogs when I was 14 and 15 at the old Oshawa Civic Auditorium. That’s where the two of us would go together many winter Friday nights to cheer on our hometown Junior B Oshawa Crushmen, especially our neighbour, Scott Willson.

While my parents came a bit late to the appeal of pizza, I do recall my dad heading out on the occasional Friday night when some of my Nipigon Street friends, perhaps Mike Byrne and Paul Sobanski, were over, and dad coming back with a box of Mothers Pizza from Simcoe North, the first and only Mothers in Oshawa at the time.

Before that, and well into the 1970s anyway, my dad still picked up fish-and-chip dinners for us on Fridays after work, first at Paul and Helen Plishka’s Rose Bowl Fish and Chips at the corner of Bond and Prince streets, and later Pat and Mike Volpe‘s Pat & Mike Fish & Chips on Hortop Street, as well as from the H. Salt, Esq. Authentic English Fish and Chips franchise on Simcoe Street North in Oshawa, where we also enjoyed their fish and chips. Haddon Salt had operated his fish and chips store in Skegness, in the northeastern corner of England, before moving to the United States and, along with his wife, Grace, opening their first shop in Sausalito, California, under the name of Salt’s Fish & Chips in 1965. Pope Paul VI’s proclamation of Paenitemini (Apostolic Constitution On Penance) on Feb. 17, 1966, allowed episcopal conferences to permit Catholics in their jurisdictions to substitute some other penitential practice aside from abstaining from meat on Fridays, a practice which had been in force in the universal church since Pope Saint Nicholas 1, also known as Saint Nicholas the Great, in 851, so dad was in no hurry to abandon eating fish on Fridays, especially Halibut. I was nine years old, growing up in Oshawa, Ontario, when all this came to pass in 1966.

Instead of going to Inco or Vale and down into a mine or working at the surface in a refinery or smelter, the men (and they were invariably men back then) I knew in the 1960s carried their metal lunch pails into the factory at General Motors to build cars and trucks. When they were leaving at the end of their shift, they punched the same clock they had coming in. Every time I hear Men of the Deeps sing Rise Again or Working Man, my union resolve deepens just a little bit more.

In the fall of 1970, he walked the picket line for 3½ months in the longest strike against his employer since the Dirty Thirties.

While he wasn’t much fond of politicians of any stripe collectively, he did have a bit of a liking individually for Mike Starr, Oshawa-Whitby riding Progressive Conservative MP, and a federal labour minister in the Diefenbaker government for a time in the 1960s, but was truly fond of the man who defeated Starr by 15 votes in the June 1968 federal election, future NDP leader Ed Broadbent, who in his youth had been my parent’s paperboy for a time, delivering the Oshawa Times to the south-side of their rented Church Street red Insulbrick duplex, my first home.

Truth be told, my dad liked Ed not so much because of his NDP affiliation, although as a trade unionist that carried weight, but mainly because he saw him as a hardworking, honest politician; a kindred spirit, although my dad would have put it more plainly than that.

My dad had a Grade 8 education and wasn’t much for reading. I don’t think I ever saw him read a book, other than maybe to consult the odd one for some factual information. His idea of leisure was to work with his hands at carpentry or upholstery, and he built me, the reader, several fine custom-size wooden bookcases, with a larger than normal shelf sometimes for oversized books.

My non-book reading father, however, made time every day to read the local daily newspaper, and from 1983, when I began working as a newspaper reporter, until his death in 1989, quite likely read every newspaper story I wrote during that six-year period, and, as I learned only after he died, would often point out my byline in the Peterborough Examiner to shopkeepers and acquaintances in Bridgenorth, a small community just outside of Peterborough on Chemong Lake, where he lived from 1980 to 1989.

That man, an ordinary man by the measures of the world, yet an extraordinary man of character by any measure, was my father.

Bill Barker. Born on July 13, 1919. Gone from this earthly plain to his true home, but never forgotten by those of us who knew him here. My dad.

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Dr. Alan Rich, who served longer than any other doctor in Thompson, has passed away

Thompson’s best-loved doctor has passed away.

The legendary, and at times controversial, Dr. Alan Rich, who still holds the record as Thompson’s longest-serving physician, having practiced medicine here for more than 40 years, died earlier today.

Dr. Rich, who died in Swan River, was 73. There will be visitation at the Boardman/Northland Funeral Home at 28 Nelson Rd. here in Thompson, Manitoba next Sunday evening on Jan. 27 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The funeral service will follow next Monday morning at 10 a.m. on Jan. 28 at St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church at 114 Cree Rd. in Thompson. Internment will be at Thompson Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Dr. Rich’s memory to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Canada, a registered charity founded in 1983, which helps children with critical and life-threatening illnesses live out their biggest wishes. The Make-A-Wish Foundation of Canada granted 615 wishes to Canadian children with life-threatening illnesses in 2017, spending an average of $13,268 per wish granted. Their charitable registration number is 89526 9173 RR0001 and their address is Make-A-Wish Foundation of Canada, 4211 Yonge St.,  Suite 520, Toronto, Ontario, M2P 2A9. Their website can be found at http://www.makeawish.ca

Sent packing from Thompson General Hospital into retirement in 2011 after a high-profile dispute with two other doctors on the old Burntwood Regional Health Authority (BRHA) medical staff, just three years later he was presented with the Key to the City of Thompson on Oct. 6, 2014, the city’s highest and infrequently bestowed honour, by then Mayor Tim Johnston and then Coun. Stella Locker, a registered nurse, who was council’s longest-serving member at the time. Dr. Rich had moved to Swan River a number of years ago.

“Al, from me to you, I want to say thank you for your commitment, thank you for your dedication, and I am happy to say that no one has played more of an important role in the health care of Thompsonites, and Northerners, than Dr. Alan Rich. You are to be thanked for the commitment you made,” the mayor said at the awards ceremony at city hall in 2014.

Even after his departure from Thompson General Hospital, Dr. Rich continued to practice medicine for quite a while from both from his office in the Professional Building on Selkirk Avenue, where he had been a long-time tenant of J.B. Johnston Ventures Limited, Tim Johnston’s family property holding company, and in his new home in Swan River, where Prairie Mountain Health (PMH) granted him hospital privileges at Swan River Valley Hospital. Born and raised in Thompson, Tim Johnston, of course, is the son of Dr. Blain Johnston, a former city councillor who was the first regular, full-time doctor in Thompson.

Dr. Rich graduated from the University of Saskatchewan as a doctor of medicine on May 13, 1971. He started practicing medicine in Thompson the following year, after completing his residency internship at Queen Elizabeth Hospital of Montreal in June 1972. Over the course of his long medical career, Rich worked as a general practitioner, worked in CancerCare, was an anesthetist, oversaw dialysis, and worked as a medical examiner. Dr. Rich had originally arrived in Thompson from Saskatchewan as a summer student to work underground at Inco. He hoped to make enough money working in the mines during summers to put himself through medical school, which he did. In Saskatchewan, Dr. Rich as a young man, had worked on the Herriman family farm in Creelman, southeast of Regina. He returned to Thompson to open up his practice after graduating. Dr. Rich was also a high-calibre judo competitor, coaching and training judo practitioners, as well as serving as team physician for the Thompson Hawks, a senior amateur men’s hockey team. Their best season was in 1974-75 when they won the Edmonton Journal Trophy (Western Canada Intermediate Championship) but lost in the Hardy Cup Championship (Canadian Intermediate A Championship) that season to the Moncton Bears, the Eastern Canada champions.

On April 9, 2013, he was presented with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, created to mark the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty’s accession to the throne, by Swan River Mayor Glen McKenzie.  “It was a surprise,” Twyla Machan, editor of the local Swan Valley Star & Times, quoted Rich as saying in receiving the award. “In Thompson, I was on the wrong side of political decisions, but I am a doctor with no limitations.” Discussing his move to Swan River where he set up a practice, Rich told the Star & Times he was enjoying it there. “It’s a lot of fun. This is a very good place. I retired here, and I will spend the rest of my days here I think.”

Dr. Rich always provoked strong feelings among Thompson residents, many of whom he delivered. He was legendary for making house calls or dropping by unannounced after an 18 or 20-hour day at the hospital and his office because he was concerned how a patient was doing and wanted to check in on them. He had a knack for identifying what was ailing someone when other doctors may not have been able to put their finger on the problem so quickly, as his many loyal patients attested to  over the years. He may have even saved the odd cherished pet along the way, but there is no official record of such.

While some found the bearded Dr. Rich, clad in his leather motorcycle jacket and jeans, which he was attired in when he picked up the Key to the City of Thompson in 2014, a tad brusque in his bedside manner, folks in this hardrock nickel mining town generally liked his no-BS plain-speaking ways.  Besides, his YellowPages ad did say he was “friendly, courteous and understanding.” If he had his eccentricities, don’t we all? Live and let live is a way of life in the North.

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Wa Ni Ska Tan meeting in Thompson May 15-17: Heart of Northern Manitoba mega-project hydro-electric country

Wa Ni Ska Tan, the Cree word for “wake up” or to “rise up”, an alliance of hydro-impacted communities, which is a Winnipeg-based cross-regional research alliance on the implications of hydro development for environments and indigenous communities in Northern Canada, and funded largely by a seven-year $2.5-million Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) partnership grant in 2015, meets in Thompson, the heart of Northern Manitoba mega-project hydro-electric country, this coming week from May 15-17 for their annual spring research gathering.

University College of the North (UCN) has donated free-of-charge space for some of the meetings, sessions and workshops from Tuesday to Thursday on the Thompson campus, while other meetings will be held at Ma-Mow-We-Tak Friendship Centre at 4 Nelson Rd.

Sylvia McAdam, co-founder of the Idle No More movement, is scheduled to provide the keynote address.

The Idle No More campaign originated first on social media in 2012, first on Facebook and later with Twitter, when McAdam, Nina Wilson, Sheelah Mclean and Jessica Gordon expressed concern about provisions of Bill C-45, which went onto receive royal assent on Dec. 14, 2012. Idle No More began nationally on Nov. 10, 2012 at Station 20 West, a community enterprise centre serving Riversdale, King George and Pleasant Hill on the west side of Saskatoon. The early stages of the movement consisted of five rallies before a National Day of Action on Dec. 10, 2012. It was Gordon who is credited by Wilson with coming up with the name one evening in the fall of 2012 when the four women were talking and Gordon said, “We need to get off our asses and quit being idle. We can’t be idle no more.”

McAdam will also facilitate a screening at 4:30 p.m. May 16 of Dakota filmmaker Sheldon Wolfchild’s 2104 documentary, The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code, as well as a discussion and workshop.

SSHRC is the federal research funding agency that promotes and supports post-secondary–based research and research training in the humanities and social sciences. SSHRC spends more than $350 million annually, supporting more than 8,000 graduate students and nearly 14,000 researchers.  The funding was awarded through SSHRC’s Partnership Grants, Partnership Development Grants, Insight Grants and Insight Development Grants programs November 2015 competition awards and publicly announced 10 months later on Sept. 9, 2016, when on Sept. 9, 2016, when SSHRC announced support for new research projects, including “Wa Ni Ska Tan: cross-regional research alliance on the implications of hydro development for environments and indigenous communities in Northern Canada” and other projects intended to “build knowledge and foster collaboration in a wide range of disciplines.”

Wa Ni Ska Tan emerged out of several meetings in Thompson in December 2014, and at Opaskwayak Cree Nation, adjacent to The Pas, in in June 2015, as well as two tours of hydro-affected communities in Northern Manitoba.  Wa Ni Ska Tan is comprised of representatives from 24 Cree (Ininew/Inniniwak), Anishinaabe, and Métis communities and First Nations; 22 researchers from nine universities in Canada and the United States, as well as a number of government entities and 14 social justice and environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Ramona Neckoway, an assistant professor in Aboriginal and Northern Studies at UCN, and an active member of Wa Ni Ska Tan from Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation at Nelson House, is a PhD Candidate at the University of Manitoba whose research focuses on perspectives, experiences and implications of energy production on Cree homelands in Northern Manitoba. The working title of her thesis  is “‘Where the Otters Play: ‘The Horseshoe’ to Footprint and Beyond: exploring the spatial and temporal realities of hydroelectric energy production in northern Manitoba” and focuses on a critical and lesser known voices, histories, and perspectives of hydro-affected Cree “UCN is a great venue for this year’s gathering; as a faculty member and as a person from a hydro-affected community, I am looking forward to having sessions at our new facility here in Thompson,” NationTalk, an indigenous newswire reported May 11.

A University of Manitoba-led project, “Wa Ni Ska Tan: cross-regional research alliance on the implications of hydro development for environments and indigenous communities in Northern Canada” is headed by Stéphane McLachlan, a professor in U of M’s Department of Environment and Geography. His teaching and research focus on the interface between the biological and social sciences, and his research group is particularly interested in community centred and action research with farmers, rural communities, and First Nations across western North America, Europe, and Asia.

Colin Bonnycastle, an associate professor and director of the Northern Social Work Program at the University of Manitoba at 3 Station Rd. here in Thompson, and Peter Kulchyski, from Bissett, a professor of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, who attended the government-run Frontier Collegiate residential high school in Cranberry Portage, are listed among the numerous co-applicants for McLachlan’s $2.5-million SSHRC grant.

A UCN co-applicant is Maureen Simpkins, an associate professor in Aboriginal and Northern Studies and Social Sciences.  She completed her PhD in adult education in 2000 at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto.  Simpkins’s PhD thesis is entitled, “After Delgamuukw:  Aboriginal Oral Tradition as Evidence in Aboriginal Rights and Title Litigation.”

Listed as “partners” on the “Wa Ni Ska Tan: cross-regional research alliance on the implications of hydro development for environments and indigenous communities in Northern Canada” SSHRC application are the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba; LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics in British Columbia; Manitoba Alternative Food Research Alliance; Manitoba Eco-Network Inc.; the Public Interest Law Centre, Social Planning Council of Winnipeg; University of Winnipeg; Tides Canada; and Manitoba Wildlands, all based in Winnipeg; McGill University in Montreal; Norway House Cree Nation; Pimicikamak Okimawin (Cross Lake Band of Indians);  the Sagkeeng Alliance from Pine Falls; Swan Lake First Nation; the University of Saskatchewan at Saskatoon and St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick; and the Tommy Thomas Memorial Health Complex in South Indian Lake.

Other partners listed on the SSHRC application include Black River First Nation Pine Falls; Boreal Action Inc. in Winnipeg; Brokenhead Ojibway Nation at Scanterbury, Manitoba; the Toronto-based Canadian Association for Food Studies; Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, and the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources, also in Winnipeg; the Community Association of South Indian Lake; Concerned Fox Lake Grassroots Citizens in Gillam; Food Matters Manitoba, based in Winnipeg; Four Arrows Regional Health Authority Inc. in Winnipeg; along with the Green Action Centre, also in Winnipeg; Honor the Earth in Callaway, Minnesota; the Winnipeg-based Interchurch Council on Hydropower; Jerch Law in Winnipeg, where Green Party of Manitoba leader James Beddome practices law;
Justice Seekers of Nelson House; the Keewatin Public Interest Research Group in Winnipeg; the Winnipeg-based Lake Winnipeg Indigenous Collective; and Aki Energy Inc., a Winnipeg-based indigenous social enterprise.

The Interchurch Council on Hydropower is made up of official representatives of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (Manitoba/Northwestern Ontario Synod), Mennonite Central Committee Manitoba, United Church of Canada (Conference of Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario) and All Native Circle Conference, and Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Winnipeg (but not the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas where many of the large hydroelectric projects are located).

A broad range of research approaches are used to achieve project outcomes, including vegetation and seed bank sampling, geomatics, mail-out questionnaires, individual and group interviews, participatory mapping, and research video. McLachlan and graduate students in his Environmental Conservation Lab actively collaborate with rural and indigenous communities and stakeholders across North America and researchers from Alberta,  Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.  McLachlan’s Environmental Conservation Lab research focuses on risk analysis of genetically modified organism (GM) crops; nanotechnology, diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, bovine tuberculosis (TB); nanotechnology; environmental restoration; spatial and dispersal ecology; environmental justice and video.

Thompson is and has been a major Manitoba Hydro hydro-electric project staging area for more than 60 years, dating back to the Kelsey Generating Station being built on the upper arm of the Nelson River between 1957 and 1961 to supply the International Nickel Company’s (INCO) mining and smelting operations in the Moak Lake and Mystery Lake areas. Kelsey was also built to supply electricity to the City of Thompson. Six years after completion, the generating station was linked to the province’s electrical system.

Elsewhere along the Nelson River in Northern Manitoba, construction was completed on Kettle Generating Station in 1974; Long Spruce Generating Station in 1979; and Limestone Generating Station in 1990. Construction finished on the Wuskwatim Generating Station, located on the Burntwood River, in the Nelson House Resource Management Area, approximately 45 kilometres southwest of Thompson and 35 kilometres southeast of Nelson House, in 2012.

The Wuskwatim Generating Station journey began for the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation when they ratified the March 1996 Comprehensive Implementation Agreement, flowing from the December 1977 Northern Flood Agreement (NFA) Implementation Agreement.

Those agreements were aimed at mitigating and compensating the indigenous Cree and Métis of Northern Manitoba, including the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, for the impacts of the 1977 Churchill River Diversion Project and Nelson River Diversion Project.

The project diverted water flows through a series of channels and control structures into the Nelson River. The effects of this diversion on pre-existing water levels included increased flows in the Burntwood River, a three-metre rise in the level of Southern Indian Lake and the flooding of some 809 hectares of reserve land in Nelson House, requiring remedial works and other mitigation.

The Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation used their settlement with Manitoba Hydro as a stepping-stone toward greater self-sufficiency. Wuskwatim marked the first time a First Nation and Manitoba Hydro entered into a formal partnership to develop and operate a hydro-electric project.

Manitoba Hydro provides ongoing management and operations services to the Wuskwatim Power Limited Partnership in accordance with the project development agreement signed in June 2006. Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation has the option to own up to 33 percent of the project, through the Wuskwatim Power Limited Partnership, while Manitoba Hydro owns the balance.

The Keeyask Hydropower Limited Partnership (KHLP) began construction in July 2014 on the 695-MW Keeyask Generating Station, located on the Nelson River about 30 kilometres west of Gillam and downstream from Split Lake, within the Split Lake Resource Management Area about 180 kilometres northeast of Thompson.

Manitoba Hydro and representatives from the Tataskweyak Cree Nation, War Lake First Nation, Fox Lake Cree Nation, and York Factory First Nation signed the Joint Keeyask Development Agreement at Split Lake for the Keeyask Generating Station in 2009. Under the agreement Manitoba Hydro provides administrative and management services for the project and will own at least 75 per cent of the equity. The four First Nations will collectively have the right to own up to 25 per cent of the partnership.

Construction delays have increased the cost to more than $8.7 billion and the project manager in January told provincial regulators that further delays could raise that to as much as $10.5 billion if there are additional delays until November 2022. Keeyask is officially still supposed to be completed by the summer of 2021 at a cost of $8.7 billion.

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Closing Time: Last hoist for Thompson’s Birchtree Mine

On the surface, it was an unseasonably warm and brilliant orange early autumn day. Underground, it was closing time. Not last call, but rather the hard rock mining on-the-job equivalent: last hoist.

This day has almost come for Birchtree Mine in Thompson, Manitoba before. In fact, the day did come for Birchtree for most of a decade in the 1980s, as the mine was on “care and maintenance” because of unfavourable market conditions from December 1977 through 1989.

And on Oct. 18, 2012, Vale had announced care and maintenance was being considered for Birchtree Mine in 10 months time in August 2013. After finding $100 million in cost savings at its Manitoba Operations, bringing its cost per metric tonne for finished nickel to under US$10,000, Birchtree Mine would receive on May 6, 2013 a reprieve that lasted almost 4½ years. Until now.

As well as nickel, Birchtree has deposits of copper, cobalt, gold, silver, platinum and palladium. Re-opening of Birchtree was considered in 1981, but was deferred in favour of development of the Thompson open pit mine. Care and maintenance is a term used in the mining industry to describe processes and conditions on a closed minesite where there is potential to recommence operations at a later date. During a care and maintenance phase, production is stopped but the site is managed to ensure it remains in a safe and stable condition.

Preparation to place Birchtree on care and maintenance again some 28 years after its last mining production 12-year hiatus begins two days hence on Monday. Asset recovery is expected to be complete by mid-November, and the plan is for the mine to be officially on care and maintenance by Dec. 31. The current life of mine plan has long anticipated the closure of Birchtree Mine at some point around now. Vale, however, could, as was the case with Inco in 1989, reopen Birchtree Mine should nickel prices rebound more strongly than forecast in the next few years, and the company has said it believes there is a future for the mine.

The current London Metal Exchange (LME) price of nickel per pound would likely have to at least double from US$4.72 to make reopening Birchtree for a second time economically viable. While Thompson is noted for its high quality 99.9 per cent pure electrolytic nickel that is almost free of contaminants such as lead or zinc,  resulting in it often commanding a higher price than the LME price, Birchtree has relatively lower nickel grades. Nickel prices peaked at $25.51 per pound on the LME in May 2007, just months after Vale, the Brazilian mining giant, bought Inco in a $19.9-billion all-cash tender takeover offer deal in October 2006. Nickel prices have fallen nearly 70 per cent in the past six years as international supply far outstrips demand.

The nickel find near Manasan Falls, four kilometres east of Birchtree Lake and about five kilometres southwest of Thompson, that would become Birchtree Mine was first announced publicly to the world on April 22, 1964 by Henry S. Wingate, chairman of the board of the International Nickel Company of Canada (INCO) Limited.

There are several other key dates in Thompson’s early mining history: Borehole 11962 – the so-called “Discovery Hole” at Cook Lake, a diamond drill exploration hole – was collared Feb. 5, 1956 and assayed positive for nickel.

There’s also the Dec. 3, 1956 signing of the founding 33-page typewritten double-spaced agreement creating Thompson between the Province of Manitoba’s F.C. Bell, minister of mines and natural resources, and International Nickel Company of Canada Limited’s Ralph Parker, vice-president and general manager, and secretary William F. Kennedy. As well, there was Manitoba Liberal-Progressive Premier Douglas Campbell driving the last spike in the Canadian National Railway (CNR) 30-mile branch line from Sipiwesk to Thompson Oct. 20, 1957, and March 25, 1961, when Progressive Conservative Premier Duff Roblin cut the nickel ribbon to officially open the $185-million smelter and refinery, set to close also next August, as the world’s first fully integrated nickel operation, and with its 1,800 employees, second in size in the “free world” at the time only to Inco’s Sudbury operations. Vale’s Thompson operations, landholdings or mining rights, consist of at least 2,947 order-in-council (OIC) leases, mineral leases and mining claims “negotiated as part of an agreement entered into in 1956 between Vale Inco and the Province of Manitoba covering the development of the Thompson nickel deposits,” noted filings by the company in 2004 and 2008 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Thompson, originally a townsite within the newly-created 975-square-mile Local Government District (LGD) of Mystery Lake, within the Dauphin Judicial District, from 1956 to 1966, became a town on Jan. 3, 1967 and a city just 3½ years later on July 7, 1970.

Wingate, a lawyer, was born in Talas, Turkey, the son and grandson of American missionaries, and was raised in Northfield, Minnesota. He was with the New York law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell from 1929 to 1935, when he joined INCO as assistant secretary. The sinking of the Birchtree Mine development shaft began on Ink 6 in 1964. The three-compartment shaft was completed to 1,373 feet a year later.

Birchtree began production in 1966. Between 1965 and 1967 the production shaft on Pip 301 was sunk to 2,800 feet, with levels between 300 and 2,300 feet at 200-foot intervals. Inco announced plans in 2000 to move ahead with a $70.4-million deepening of Birchtree Mine to be completed in 2002 and help extend the mine’s life by at least 15 years. In its Exploration and Development Highlights 2001 report, the Manitoba Science, Technology, Energy and Mines Department estimated the shaft deepening would access proven reserves of 13.6 million tonnes of 1.79 per cent nickel and “extend Birchtree’s production to 2016.”

As a result of the Birchtree Mine closing, about 200 high-paid jobs are expected to disappear from the local economy over the next few months – a very big though by no means fatal hit to the local economy – including not only Vale employees but other mining sector contractors and support service positions.

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Soundingsjohnbarker: ‘You can write that?’ You bet

https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/) debuted as a WordPress blog two years ago today with a small post headlined “Labour history: Mine-Mill v. Steel” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/labour-history-mine-mill-v-steel/) on September 3, 2014 about Mick Lowe’s The Raids, a 295-page fictionalized work centred on the epic battle in Sudbury in the late 1950s and early 1960s in relation to the Cold War, international politics, McCarthyism, Communism, and the inter-union rivalry between the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) and the International Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers Local 598, which had just been published that May by Robin Philpot of Baraka Books in Montreal. Here in Thompson there is a still partially untold story of that same inter-union rivalry between the Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers and United Steelworkers of America between 1960 and 1962. Mine-Mill was the first bargaining agent here in Thompson when Inco workers unionized and had negotiated a contract with Inco that ran through 1964. But the USW was certified by the Manitoba Labour Board as the bargaining agent for Inco employees in Thompson on May 31, 1962. Because the USW itself went on to merge five years later with the United States section of the International Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers in Tucson, Arizona in January 1967, a lot of that nastiness has been papered over, at least publicly.

There was also a post that day headlined “Black Death: Not so bad?” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/black-death-not-so-bad/) which went onto explain a new study in PLOS ONE, an international peer-reviewed journal, authored by University of South Carolina anthropologist Sharon DeWitte, which suggested that people who survived the medieval plague, commonly known then as the Black Death, lived significantly longer and were healthier than people who lived before the epidemic struck in 1347. The Black Death killed tens of millions of people, an estimated 30 to 50 per cent of the European population, over just four years between 1347 and 1351, which, it turns out, may not have been such a bad thing after all.

Finally, on Sept. 3, 2014, soundingsjohnbarker had a third posting headlined “A bigger picture,” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/a-bigger-picture/) which focused on Samaritan’s Purse’s “Operation Christmas Child,” which was started in 1990. By 1993, it had grown to the point it was adopted by Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian organization founded by Dr. Bob Pierce in 1970 and now run by Franklin Graham, son of 97-year-old Asheville, North Carolina evangelist Billy Graham.  While “Operation Christmas Child” has its share of supporters and critics with meritorious arguments on both sides for and against its “shoebox” gifts collected and distributed in more than 130 countries worldwide each Christmas [each shoebox is filled with hygiene items, school supplies, toys, and candy. Operation Christmas Child then works with local churches to put on age-appropriate presentations of the gospel at the events where the shoeboxes are distributed], Samaritan’s Purse is about much more than Operation Christmas Child, whatever your views might be on that, I pointed out. In the midst of the deadliest Ebola viral hemorrhagic fever outbreak recorded in West Africa since the disease was discovered in 1976, Samaritan Purse’s Ebola care centre on the outskirts of the Liberian capital of Monrovia was right on the front lines. Dr. Kent Brantly, the medical director of the centre, contracted Ebola and was medically evacuated to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the first patient ever medically evacuated to the United States for Ebola treatment, where he was given ZMapp, an experimental drug treatment produced by U.S.-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, while Nancy Writebol, who was with Serving in Mission, (SIM), which runs the hospital where Samaritan’s Purse has the Ebola care centre, was also medically evacuated to Emory University Hospital and treated with ZMapp.  Both Brantly and Writebol survived their brush with death Ebola experiences and returned to Liberia.

So that was Day 1 for soundingsjohnbarker on Sept. 3, 2014. And in some ways it set the tone for the 226 posts that have followed since over the last two years. Some of them tell Thompson stories but many don’t. Some (OK, many) are offbeat and the range of topics that has struck my fancy to write about has been eclectic, if not downright eccentric at times. I explained some of my thinking behind how I choose what to write about in a blog post March 7 headlined “Tipping points and blogging by the numbers” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/tipping-points-and-blogging-by-the-numbers/) where I noted, “Write local if you want some big numbers on a given day. While I do from time to time, if some local issue or story interests me in an unusual way, I stay away from that kind of writing for the most part. For one thing, those kind of stories, I find, have little staying power, with three or four rare local exceptions (an unsolved murder story; a story about Dr. Alan Rich’s retirement and local lawyer Alain Huberdeau’s appointment to the provincial court bench; and several Vale stories come to mind). But most of them are one or two day wonders. It’s the more eccentric pieces on other places and even times that have a deeper and wider audience in the long run. Fortunately, I prefer to write on more eclectic things these days without any particular regard for geography or subject matter if the topic strikes my interest. Thompson city council may well make decisions that affect me in myriad ways, not the least of which is in the pocketbook as a local taxpayer, but even that can’t remove the glaze from my eyes long enough to write much about local municipal politics, although our water bills are tempting me to make an exception. But reading newspaper accounts of such goings on is usually painful enough. Mind you, I realize what strikes my fancy to write about when I don’t write local, is not for everyone, and I have no doubt that I’ve created some eye glazing of my own especially when I write on eschatology or some other arcane to some of my local readers religious topic.”

That’s not to say I’ve lost my interest in local affairs. I live here after all. But I don’t have the inclination, or time even if I had, to write about all of them. So, pretty much like everyone else in Thompson, I rely on the local media, including the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News, CBC Radio’s North Country, Arctic Radio’s thompsononline.ca and Shaw TV to keep me informed with occasional stories about Vale’s proposed Thompson Foot Wall Deep Project, at the north end of Thompson Mine, previously known as Thompson (1D), and what the chances of the 11 million tonnes of nickel mineralization, which form a deep, north plunging continuation of the Thompson deposit, have of being developed into a new mine that will sustain the Thompson operation for up to 15 years when nickel is selling on the London Metal Exchange (LME) for US$4.5269/lb, with the refinery and smelter, which opened March 25, 1961, set to close sometime in 2018, resulting in lost jobs – don’t kid yourself and think otherwise – as more than 30 per cent of Vale’s production employees in Thompson work in the smelter and refinery.

Take away nickel mining, which isn’t destined fortunately to happen for at least several decades yet in even the most pessimistic scenario, and there’s not much reason for Thompson, at least as we have all come to know it, to exist, all mindless happy talk from politicians, newspaper publishers and other spin doctors aside. Mind you, I have admittedly been a tad critical of newspaper publishers in this space before, writing on Sept. 14, 2014: “In the old days, publishers and newspaper owners would from time to time ‘kill’ a writer’s column before publication. Despite their ballyhoo and blather about freedom of the press, publishers and newspaper proprietors are almost universally in my long experience with them a timid lot, if not outright moral cowards at times, always afraid of offending someone.”(https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/retroactively-spiked-the-post-publication-killing-of-msgr-charles-popes-blog-post-on-new-york-citys-st-patricks-day-parade/).

But if you think being a regional hub for Northern Manitoba, or tourism, or even both, is going to give Thompson a new raison d’etre for continued existence at its current size and state in a somehow magically more diversified local economy sans nickel mining some day in the near-to-mid future, I’m afraid you’ve been drinking too much of the Thompson Economic Diversification Working Group (TEDWG) Kool-Aid.

I’m a bit of a contrarian when it comes to the local good news peddlers of all stripes. So it’s perhaps best for everyone’s peace of mind, mine included, if I stick these days to writing mainly about the faraway and eclectic. Bad news prophets have a short best-before date at home.

And besides there is something just plain fun about writing about the weird and whacky. It’s a good antidote to taking either yourself, or life for that matter, too seriously. Hence I’m just as incorrigible when it comes to posting stories or links from others about the offbeat and odd on Facebook, as I am about my own blog post writing, I must confess. “The internet has been aflame this summer with predictions the Antichrist was coming Aug. 30,” I mentioned in a Facebook posting Aug, 31, noting I had forgotten all about it until the next day. “Me bad,” I wrote. When my old friend from Iqaluit Michèle LeTourneau found herself among those who couldn’t resist joining the thread to comment, she observed “OK. I think I just officially outed myself as a weird nut that posts really weird things on Facebook. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not.” I reassured her by replying, “I think I could give you a bit of competition for the ‘weird nut Facebook poster’ title, Michèle!”

Locally, the Thompson Citizen was moved to editorialize Aug. 31 that “Northern Manitoba’s summer of woe turned [a] deeper shade of blue with the announcement Aug. 22 that Tolko was shutting down its operations in The Pas.”

Tolko Industries said they were going to pull the plug Dec. 2 on their heavy-duty kraft paper and lumber mill in The Pas after 19 years, leaving all 332 employees unemployed. The mill in The Pas has been a money-loser for years. It was conceived by the Progressive Conservative provincial government of premier Duff Roblin in 1966.

Less than a month before Tolko pulled the plug on its mill in The Pas, OmniTRAX, the Denver-based short line railroad, which owns the Port of Churchill, announced on July 25 it would be laying off or not re-hiring about 90 port workers, as it was cancelling the 2016 grain shipping season. OmniTRAX bought most of Northern Manitoba’s rail track from The Pas to Churchill in 1997 from CN for $11 million. OmniTRAX took over the related Port of Churchill, which opened in 1929, when it acquired it from Canada Ports Corporation, for a token $10 soon after buying the rail line. The Port of Churchill has the largest fuel terminal in the Arctic and is North America’s only deep water Arctic seaport that offers a gateway between North America and Mexico, South America, Europe and the Middle East. OmniTRAX created Hudson Bay Railway in 1997, the same year it took over operation of the Port of Churchill. It operates 820 kilometres of track in Manitoba between The Pas and Churchill.

At the time the cancellation was announced, OmniTRAX did not have a single committed grain shipping contract. Normally, the Port of Churchill has a 14-week shipping season from July 15 to Oct. 31. When the Canadian Wheat Board lost its grain monopoly, creating a new grain market several years ago, and was renamed G3 Canada Ltd. by its new owners, the newly-minted G3 Canada Ltd. began building a network of grain elevators, terminals and vessels that bypasses Churchill and uses the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence River and West Coast to move grain to foreign markets. Surprise.

While OmniTRAX accepted a letter of intent last December from Mathias Colomb First Nation, Tataskweyak Cree Nation and the War Lake First Nation to buy its rail assets in Manitoba, along with the Port of Churchill, the deal has not been completed to date, and its future looks murky to non-existent. Rail freight shipments measured by frequency along the Bayline have been cut in half by OmniTRAX this summer.

“Government announces more grant money to develop tourism during visit to Churchill” headlined the Nickel Belt News in an unbylined front page story Sept. 2.  Don’t get me wrong. I love Beluga whales and polar bears. I’ve seen both visiting Churchill (known as Kuugjuaq in Inuit.) And guess what? While Beluga whales and polar bears will support some local tourism and related businesses, it’s still not enough to make for a local sustainable economy of any scale in the community of less than 800 permanent residents now along our Hudson Bay coast.

That’s about as likely to happen as calling itself the “Wolf Capital of the World” is going make a game-changing difference to Thompson’s economic future. A difference, sure. Great. But don’t bet Northern Manitoba’s future on tourism. We’re still either a resource-based economy or no economy to speak of.  If it’s any comfort that remains largely true for most of our provinces and territories and Canada as a whole. Sure there’s the capital cities and a few other kinda largish provincial cities – Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, Québec City, Moncton, Saint John, Halifax and St. John’s (this is a very generous reading BTW) – and even a few more genuine high-tech areas such as Gatineau, Québec and Kanata, Ontario on either side of Ottawa, along with Kitchener, Ontario and elsewhere in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, all of which are exceptions to the hewers of wood and drawers of water reality, but the exceptions are few and far between.

Oops … did I say that out loud? Me bad.

Kool-Aid anyone?

I may need to quench my thirst unless I intend to pen my next post on UFOs, eschatology or perhaps some virulent disease, preferably a safe distance from Thompson.

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