Ryan Land leaves Vale after 8½ years to ‘pursue the next chapter in my career story’

Ryan Land has left Vale after 8½ years.

Land joined Vale, becoming manager of corporate affairs for Manitoba Operations, on May 9, 2011. He spent most of his time with the Brazilian mining giant working in Thompson, with his role growing to include managing organizational design and human resources. He was transferred to Sudbury, Ont. 14½ months ago in September 2018 for an expanded role with Vale as manager of corporate and indigenous affairs for Ontario and Manitoba.

He has also served as chair of the aboriginal relations committee of the Mining Association of Manitoba since April 2013, and as a member of the aboriginal affairs committee of the Ottawa-based Mining Association of Canada since October 2018. He has been a member of the aboriginal relations committee of the Ontario Mining Association since October 2018. As well, Land has been a member of the Manitoba liaison committee on mining and exploration since last June.

Land arrived in Thompson originally in August 2009 to become principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate.

In a public Facebook posting Nov. 14, Land says,”I am officially leaving Vale to pursue the next chapter of my career! I am taking this step without knowing what (or even where – though our first choice is Sudbury as we are thoroughly enjoying it here and the kids are thriving) is next. Even though it was time for a change, it is bittersweet for sure as I am so grateful for the opportunities, challenges and growth that Vale afforded me. I’ve worked with amazing people and from the beginning the company (and a key leader or two – they know who they are!) took a chance on me and allowed me to influence outcomes, innovate and become a champion for the success of others. No regrets, and also no idea what’s next. Yikes!”

Land ends his brief post by wryly quipping, “Another of my favourite quotes is by Emily Dickinson who said ‘The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.’ Soul ajar. Hopefully the ecstatic experience covers the mortgage!”

Land posted a similar public message on LinkedIn last week to his one on Facebook.

“As some of you already know, I have left Vale to pursue the next chapter in my career story,” Land wrote. “The move from educational leader to corporate affairs at a mining company was an enriching, challenging and ultimately rewarding career pivot and I am so very grateful for having had the opportunity. I worked with, for and alongside so many remarkable people and the last (nearly) 9 years provided me with a real chance to grow, stretch, collaborate, influence outcomes, build meaningful relationships and work on being a champion for the success of my colleagues, our stakeholders and rights-holders, and the communities we work in and near. Importantly, it afforded me a real chance to deepen my understanding of truth and reconciliation, and my responsibility within it.

“I am not in a rush, but I feel like excited about what might be next. We have grown to love Sudbury and the region and we’d love to stay, but I’m anxious to invest myself as a servant leader in a great organization and I appreciate that the best opportunity may not be close to our current home. I’d love to hear about possibilities and ideas you have for me, so please message me if you have advice, coaching or suggestions.”

His wife, Carmilla Land, has been a registered nurse since 2016.

A number of Land’s former Vale colleagues posted their well-wishes on LinkedIn in response to his departure from the company.

Patti Pegues, mine planning manager for Vale North Atlantic, wrote, “Best of luck Ryan. It has been a real pleasure working with you.”

Said Anuj Agarwal, manager of mines and technical standards, North Atlantic at Vale Canada: “You will be missed. It was a pleasure to know you and work alongside you.”

Whether it is a local day trip travel fall colour adventure to Onaping Falls, near Sudbury, or an international summer jaunt from San Sebastián to Tuscany to Prague to Brussels, Land is well known to friends and colleagues as a bon vivant, who immensely enjoys adventuresome travel, sampling fine local cuisine wherever he lands, and a suitable craft brew to complement the rest.

Before becoming principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate in August 2009, Land had spent the previous academic year in West Africa as principal of the Canadian Independent College of Ghana in Accra, a Canadian university preparatory co-ed college day and boarding school. The Canadian Independent College of Ghana is a licensed sister campus to the Canadian Independent College (CIC), a co-ed university preparatory college, formerly known as the North Wilmot School, which opened in 1964 and is located in Baden, Ontario. It is a member of the Council of Advanced Placement Schools in Ontario.

Land completed one year of a five-year contract in Ghana, but, as was allowed in his contract, resigned from the position for family-related reasons.

Aside from Accra and Thompson, Land was a teacher and eventually a principal in schools in a number of communities, including a Dené community, Leicester in England, rural Saskatchewan, and Steinbach and Winnipeg in Manitoba. He has a masters degree in educational leadership and undergraduate bachelor degrees in education and the arts.

On April 27, 2010 trustees from the School District of Mystery Lake took the extraordinary step of publicly rebuking Land during a board meeting and announced that his probationary status as principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate which would normally be one year in duration, was being extended another year after a unanimous vote by the board of trustees, who had considered the option of terminating Land’s employment, but ultimately decided not to.

Trustees then twice in identical 5-2 splits on Feb. 22 and April 5, 2011, voted to remove him as probationary principal.

Then in mid-June 2011, trustees subsequently fired Land for cause – four months after they had removed him as probationary principal. At a trustees meeting the day before graduation, former superintendent Bev Hammond provided details of an investigation she said she had conducted, which she said found that students had had marks changed without doing remedial work, responsibility for which she later laid at the feet of Land in an interview with the Thompson Citizen. Hammond’s marks-changing investigation focused only on the years that Land was principal.

A year later, the saga, which generated strong feelings and emotions, with plenty of both pro and anti-Land sentiment, and national media coverage, ended when the school board and Land reached a deal, resulting in an arbitration hearing that had been set to begin June 18, 2012, being cancelled. Both Land and the SDML withdrew all claims against each other and ended litigation between the parties.

Land offered his resignation to the SDML June 14, 2012, effective Nov. 18, 2011. The school board accepted Land’s resignation and rescinded his termination.

Two years later, in what supporters saw as a rich case of poetic justice, Land would run for a trustee’s seat in the October 2014 municipal election for school board, where he not only won a seat, but was the top vote-getter among all candidates picking up 2,177 votes.

In between working for the School District of Mystery Lake and Vale, Land worked out of Thompson briefly in the run-up to the 2011 federal election campaign for then Elections Canada assistant returning officer Lou Morissette as a training officer looking after all the inland training for the polls.  A bit earlier, Land had been offered the position of part-time vice-principal of Hapnot Collegiate in Flin Flon, but turned it down, trustee Glenn Smith, chair of the Flin Flon School Division board of trustees, told the Flin Flon Reminder at the time.

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The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald: ‘According to a legend of the Chippewa tribe, the lake they once called Gitche Gumee never gives up her dead’

It started as a shipwreck, followed by a newsmagazine story in the still-golden age of newsmagazines like Time, U.S. News & World Report and Newsweek. And then a song.

“According to a legend of the Chippewa tribe, the lake they once called Gitche Gumee ‘never gives up her dead.’”

Forty-four years ago today on Nov. 10, 1975, 18 kilometres off Coppermine Point, and 60 kilometres north of Sault Ste Marie, Ont., the 222-metre iron ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, with a crew of 29 aboard, sank. All were lost to the depths of Lake Superior. The laker, the pride of the American side, was still bigger than most, and had been the largest freighter to sail the Great Lakes when it was launched in 1958.

“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.”

Some of the most famous lyrics in Canadian music history, anchored to what would soon become the most famous shipwreck on the Great Lakes, first appeared as the lede of the bylined story “Great Lakes: The Cruelest Month” by James R. (Jim) Gaines, national affairs writer, and Jon Lowell for a Nov. 24, 1975 Detroit-based story in Newsweek magazine. Gaines, who began is career at the Saturday Review, the storied American weekly magazine that had started out as The Saturday Review of Literature in 1924, is now a Paris-based writer, would go onto become the first editor in chief of People magazine, as well as the editor of Time magazine, and also to serve as regional editor for the Americas, and then global editor-at-large for Reuters.

Lowell, who died in 2016, started out as a journalist in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, and had already covered politics, and civil rights events and disturbances, for the Detroit News, then Newsweek; including events like the 1967 Detroit Riot, the May 1970 Kent State shootings in Ohio, and the September 1971 Attica Prison riot, as well as covering organized crime, labour, and the auto industry, by the time the Edmund Fitzgerald sunk in November 1975. In July 1979, he would go onto co-author the book Great American Dreams: A Portrait of the Way We Are with the Washington Post’s Robert Kaiser.

Inspired in large part by reading Gaines and Lowell’s Newsweek story, Gordon Lightfoot recorded “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” the following month in December 1975 at Eastern Sound, a recording studio made out of two Victorian houses at 48 Yorkville Ave. in downtown Toronto. Ed “Peewee Charles” Ringwald and the late Terry Clements, a Detroit native who had played guitar for Lightfoot since the early 1970s, came up with the haunting guitar and steel riffs. The studio was, yes, indeed, later torn down and replaced by a parking lot. “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was released as a 7-inch 45 rpm A-side single in August 1976, taken from Lightfoot’s album “Summertime Dream” released that July. The B-side on the single was “The House You Live In.”

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was also the first commercial early digital multi-track recording tracked on the prototype 3M 32-track digital recorder, a novel technology for the time.

The Headstones – originally hailing from Kingston, Ont. – released a very fine and very different tempo  cover of Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” last March 15. You can listen to it here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8LBkYjniTU

The final voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald began Nov. 9, 1975 at the Burlington Northern Railroad Dock No.1 in Superior, Wisconsin, Sean Ley, a development officer at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point Light Station in Whitefish Point on the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan, wrote in a blog post for the museum titled “The Fateful Journey” (https://www.shipwreckmuseum.com/edmund-fitzgerald/the-fateful-journey/?fbclid=IwAR33M-6_G0X15ab73z4KkAIM3owr3GaVpRsHdaE5n_OIbSP3PzX7_FTMIGo).

Don McIsaac observed last July that “Gordon Lightfoot, who wrote ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ is from my hometown, Orillia.” McIsaac, executive vice-president and chief financial officer of Cirrus Aircraft, based at headquarters in Duluth, Minnesota, added, “From where I sit now, I can see the port the ship last left.”

The Edmund Fitzgerald was bound for Zug Island, a heavily industrialized island in River Rouge, Michigan at the mouth of the River Rouge, where it spills into the Detroit River, near Detroit, and where it was set to unload a cargo of taconite iron ore pellets before heading onto Cleveland, her home port, to wait out the winter.

Capt. Ernest M. McSorley had loaded her with 26,116 long tons of taconite pellets, made of processed iron ore, heated and rolled into marble-size balls – 26,116 long tons more than the great iron boat weighed empty. Departing Superior about 2:30 p.m., she was soon joined by the Arthur M. Anderson, which had sailed from Two Harbors, Minnesota under Capt. Bernie Cooper. The two ships were in radio contact. The Fitzgerald being the faster took the lead, with the distance between the vessels ranging from 10 to 15 miles.

McSorley and Cooper agreed to take the northerly course across Lake Superior to avoid a storm that was developing to the southwest, so they would be protected by highlands on the Canadian shore, taking them between Isle Royale and the Keweenaw Peninsula.

They passed several miles offshore from Split Rock Lighthouse, on Minnesota’s North Shore. They would later make a turn to the southeast toward Whitefish Point.

“Weather conditions continued to deteriorate,” Ley wrote. Gale warnings had been issued at 7 p.m. on Nov. 9, upgraded to storm warnings early in the morning of Nov. 10. “While conditions were bad, with winds gusting to 50 knots and seas 12 to 16 feet, both captains had often piloted their vessels in similar conditions. In the early afternoon of Nov. 10, the Fitzgerald had passed Michipicoten Island and was approaching Caribou Island, steaming toward Whitefish Bay at Superior’s east end.. The Anderson was just approaching Michipicoten, about three miles off the West End Light.

Cooper later said he watched the Edmund Fitzgerald pass far too close to Six Fathom Shoal to the north of Caribou Island. He could clearly see the ship and the beacon on Caribou on his radar set and could measure the distance between them. “He and his officers watched the Fitzgerald pass right over the dangerous area of shallow water,” Ley wrote. “By this time, snow and rising spray had obscured the Fitzgerald from sight, visible 17 miles ahead on radar.”

The last radio communication between the Fitzgerald and the Anderson was at 7:10 pm. The Fitzgerald was disappearing and reappearing on the Anderson’s radar – the height of the waves was causing interference.

Cooper asked McSorley how they were doing. McSorley replied, “We are holding our own.” A few minutes later, the Fitzgerald disappeared from the radar screen for the last time, sinking without giving a distress signal.

George Stegner recalled last year how he was on duty that night: “I was on duty this night. Stationed at K.I. Sawyer AFB in the UP of Michigan, crew member on a rescue helo. Never could have found any survivors in that storm but we sure tried hour after hour. Was a bad night. Still remember it after all this time.”

Every year since the sinking, the Episcopal Mariners’ Church – the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral – on East Jefferson Avenue in downtown Detroit, along the riverfront, has held a memorial service for the Edmund Fitzgerald crew. This year’s service was held at 11 a.m. this morning, with the bell tolling 29 times for each man on the Fitzgerald.

Dave Sproule, a natural heritage education and marketing specialist with Ontario’s Department of Environment, Conservation and Parks’ Land and Water Division in Sudbury, has written Lake Superior is a “weathermaker … so big it creates its own weather…..”

By late autumn, writes Sproule (http://www.ontarioparks.com/parksblog/edmund-fitzgerald-40-years-later/), the “Gales of November” have usually set in on Superior, creating hazardous conditions for even large modern ships.

The cause of the sinking is still a matter of much historic debate, both Ley and Sproule note.

On April 15, 1977 the U.S. Coast Guard released its official report on “Subject: S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, official number 277437, sinking in Lake Superior on 10 November 1975 with loss of life.” While the Coast Guard said the cause of the sinking could not be conclusively determined, it maintained that “the most probable cause of the sinking of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald was the loss of buoyancy and stability resulting from massive flooding of the cargo hold. The flooding of the cargo hold took place through ineffective hatch closures as boarding seas rolled along the spar deck.”

However, the Westlake, Ohio-based Lake Carriers’ Association, representing U.S.-flag vessel operators on the Great Lakes, responded in a letter to the National Transportation Safety Board in September 1977 disagreeing with the Coast Guard’s suggestion that the lack of attention to properly closing the hatch covers by the crew was responsible for the disaster. They said, however, they were inclined to accept that the Fitzgerald passed over the Six Fathom Shoal Area as reported by Cooper.

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Consultant Yves Pelletier found UCN had become ‘an internal-facing organization’

Consultant Yves Pelletier found during his research earlier this year that University College of the North (UCN) had become “an internal-facing organization, developing programs and hoping that learners and employers come,” reported Dan Smith, vice-president of academic and research at UCN in a 17-page Academic and Research Division (ARD) Organizational Transition Plan, released Oct. 1, and billed as a “high level transition framework for reorganizing and revitalizing” the division. “This passive model,” Smith said, “was resulting in fewer and fewer students in regional centres, and fewer industry and community partnerships.”

Last March 19, Higher Education Strategy Associates of Toronto said in its Government of Manitoba: Manitoba College Review System-Wide Report that UCN was projecting a $1.8 million deficit in 2018-2019. The provincial government asked for the review, co-authored by Pelletier, and Alex Usher in 2016 and it was undertaken between November 2016 and November 2017. At the end of last May, Pelletier, at the invitation of UCN,  returned to lead an initiative to ensure the alignment of administrative structures in order for the senior executive to be able to achieve their goals and objectives.

Pelletier also benchmarked UCN’s allocation of human resources by functional areas with those at two or three similar institutions offering a broad suite of post-secondary programs and serving vast geographical areas through networks of campuses and regional delivery sites.

Pelletier, a Sudbury native, recently returned to his hometown to work after the board of governors of Laurentian University on Aug. 1 unanimously approved his appointment as associate vice-president, academic and Francophone affairs, for a renewable five-year term.

Pelletier, who has also worked as a senior consultant with London, Ont.-based Academica Group, was formerly an assistant deputy minister for post-secondary education between October 2010 and November 2013 in New Brunswick.

He founded Education Connections in Fredericton the following month in December 2013.

Pelletier was also the manager of external relations between 2000 and 2004 at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the federal research-funding agency that promotes and supports post-secondary research and training in the humanities and social sciences, as well as previously working as manager of pilot projects with the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, now called Employment and Social Development Canada.

UCN will reorganize its senior administration by reducing the current four vice-presidents who report to president Doug Lauvstad to one vice-president of academic and research and a chief administrative officer. Dan Smith remains as vice-president of academic and research, while Chris Reddy, formerly vice-president strategic services and development, has been named acting chief administrative officer.

Sandra Muilenburg’s position as vice-president finance and resources is eliminated, as is that of Donna Carriere’s as vice-president, community based services. Three other senior administrative positions were eliminated in July.

As part of the reorganization, UCN has launched research into the creation of a Centre for Indigenous Community Development as a unit dedicated to further growth and prosperity in the north. The initiative will be led by Sheila North Wilson, past Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO) grand chief, and a former CTV Winnipeg journalist.

Stan Gardner, formerly the dean of library services, is now known as the university college librarian, and a year from now the library will become part of the re-named Research and Academic Excellence (RAE) department, which is currently known as Research and Innovation. The university college librarian will then report to the dean of research and academic excellence. The university college librarian and The Pas campus librarian positions will be merged into a single position. Resulting resources are to be redeployed to support direct service provision within the library (e.g. circulation desk staff, etc.).

UCN said it does not intend to publicly release Pelletier’s report.

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Ryan Land decamps to Sudbury for new Vale gig

Ryan Land, who arrived in Thompson nine years ago this month to become principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate, moves now to Sudbury for an expanded role with Vale. He joined Vale in May 2011 and has spent recent years as Manitoba Operations’ manager of corporate affairs, organizational design and human resources. Land became Vale’s manager of corporate affairs for Manitoba Operations May 9, 2011.

In an Aug. 27 Vale human resources bulletin sent to employees in Ontario and Manitoba, Angie Robson, based in Sudbury, and manager of corporate affairs and sustainability for Vale’s North Atlantic Operations and Asian refineries, said that Land will be the manager of corporate and indigenous affairs for Ontario and Manitoba effective Sept. 4. Robson said Land will report directly to her.

In between working for the School District of Mystery Lake and Vale, Land worked out of Thompson briefly in the run-up to the 2011 federal election campaign for then Elections Canada assistant returning officer Lou Morissette as a training officer looking after all the inland training for the polls.  A bit earlier, Land had been offered the position of part-time vice-principal of Hapnot Collegiate in Flin Flon, but turned it down, trustee Glenn Smith, chair of the Flin Flon School Division board of trustees, told the Flin Flon Reminder at the time.

Before becoming principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate in August 2009, Land had spent the previous academic year in West Africa as principal of the Canadian Independent College of Ghana in Accra, a Canadian university preparatory co-ed college day and boarding school. Land completed one year of a five-year contract in Ghana, but, as was allowed in his contract, resigned from the position for family-related reasons.

The Canadian Independent College of Ghana is a licensed sister campus to the Canadian Independent College (CIC), a co-ed university preparatory college, formerly known as the North Wilmot School, which opened in 1964 and is located in Baden, Ontario. It is a member of the Council of Advanced Placement Schools in Ontario.

On April 27, 2010 trustees from the School District of Mystery Lake took the extraordinary step of publicly rebuking Land during a board meeting and announced that his probationary status as principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate which would normally be one year in duration, was being extended another year after a unanimous vote by the board of trustees, who had considered the option of terminating Land’s employment, but ultimately decided not to.

Trustees then twice in identical 5-2 splits on Feb. 22 and April 5, 2011, voted to remove him as probationary principal.

Then in mid-June 2011, trustees subsequently fired Land for cause – four months after they had removed him as probationary principal. At a trustees meeting the day before graduation, former superintendent Bev Hammond provided details of an investigation she said she had conducted, which she said found that students had had marks changed without doing remedial work, responsibility for which she later laid at the feet of Land in an interview with the Thompson Citizen. Hammond’s marks-changing investigation focused only on the years that Land was principal.

A year later, the saga, which generated strong feelings and emotions, with plenty of both pro and anti-Land sentiment, and national media coverage, ended when the school board and Land reached a deal, resulting in an arbitration hearing that had been set to begin June 18, 2012, being cancelled. Both Land and the SDML withdrew all claims against each other and ended litigation between the parties.

Land offered his resignation to the SDML June 14, 2012, effective Nov. 18, 2011. The school board accepted Land’s resignation and rescinded his termination.

Two years later, in what supporters saw as a rich case of poetic justice, Land would run for a trustee’s seat in the October 2014 municipal election for school board, where he not only won a seat, but was the top vote-getter among all candidates picking up 2,177 votes.

While his seven-year tenure as Vale’s often public face in Thompson has been marked by substantial downsizing, first announced by the company in November 2010, Land himself has not been involved in  controversies or gaffes, and moves onto his new posting with an able record at Vale’s Manitoba Operations.

Land’s role within Vale that will be based in Sudbury, but he posted on Facebook Aug. 25 that he “will be in Thompson approximately 50-50 over the next few months (with accountabilities in Manitoba in the new role over the longer term).”

While most of the focus over the last year has been on the approximately 187 USW miners and above-ground workers laid off to date with Birchtree Mine being again placed on “care and maintenance” and the smelter and refinery being permanently closed, Land’s transfer to Sudbury is part of a Vale back story on office staff reductions, too, locally, as Thompson is no longer a fully integrated nickel operation for the first time since March 1961, and logically no longer requires the same level of daily on-site support based here in Thompson as a fully integrated operation did.

Mark Scott’s employment, as Vale Manitoba Operations vice-president, ended July 20 as the company has reorganized the management structure for its North Atlantic operations and Asia refineries division and eliminated the position Scott held at the top of the local Vale hierarchy.

Alistair Ross, previously the director of Ontario mining operations, also based in Sudbury, is now in charge of mining operations for the North Atlantic division, including mines in Sudbury and mining and milling operations in both Thompson and Voisey’s Bay.

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Vale’s Long Goodbye: 2,814 days adding up to 7 years, 8 months and 15 days

The Sword of Damocles dangles no longer.

Today is the day Tito Martins, then president and chief executive officer of Vale Canada and executive director of base metals for the Brazilian international parent company, told us was coming on Nov. 17, 2010 – 2,814 days ago, or expressed another way, seven years, eight months and 15 days ago. The day the Thompson smelter and refinery officially cease production and Thompson ceases to be a fully integrated nickel operation for the first time since March 1961.

Mind you, July 31, 2018 – today – is something of an arbitrary bookkeeping sort of marker. At the time of Martins’ 2010 announcement, the closing date was announced as 2015, so we’ve had about three extra years of nickel smelting and refining. As for the actual ramp down, the last furnace tap from the one remaining furnace in operation and anode cast from the smelter and the last cathode pulled from the refinery happened earlier this month. The recently completed Thompson Concentrate Loadout Facility, a fully functioning de-watering and loadout facility, will continue to ship Manitoba-source nickel concentrate from the Thompson Mill for further processing to Vale’s hydromet processing facility in Long Harbour in southeast Newfoundland on Placentia Bay on the western Avalon Peninsula, about 100 kilometres from St. John’s, as milling and mining continue in Thompson, albeit with a much smaller economic, and employment footprint, with just under 600 unionized Steelworkers remaining at Vale here by the end of the year.

Nickel smelting and refining here in Thompson has been a long and glorious run of value-added jobs, producing some of the finest electrolytic nickel plating in the world since Sept. 10, 1960 when the Thompson Smelter produced its first Bessemer nickel matte, and about six months later on March 30, 1961, when the Thompson Refinery produced its first nickel cathodes. At its peak, the smelter operated five furnaces, four nickel and one copper, and between September 1960 and July 2018 produced more than 16.6 million anodes. Between March 1961 and July 2018, the refinery produced more than five billion pounds of electro-nickel, with more than 90 per cent of the nickel produced being plating-grade quality.

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. 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 three years later on July 7, 1970.

But the key date in Thompson’s history, at least before today? That would be March 25, 1961, when Progressive Conservative Premier Duff Roblin “cut the nickel ribbon to officially open the town” of 3,800 residents Nickel Belt News founding publisher and then owner Grant Wright wrote a few days later on March 29, 1961. The Nickel Belt News came into existence on March 24, 1961 – one day before Roblin and a who’s who of government and mining crème de la crèmes – opened the $185-million smelter and refinery, the free world’s first fully integrated nickel operation and second in size in the “free world” only to Inco’s Sudbury operations. Brazilian mining giant Vale purchased Canadian nickel producer Inco Ltd. in 2006 in an $18.2 billion takeover.

“The establishment of this new, major industry is another step in the developing economic might of the nation,” said Roblin standing at the Inco refinery and smelter site here March 25, 1961. “Indeed, through its products it will contribute to the advancement of the free world. With the need to create new international markets to sustain our economic growth, the export of a finished product – electrolytic nickel – has important ramifications.”

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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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The Tower Treasure, The House on the Cliff and The Secret of the Old Mill: Franklin W. Dixon’s Hardy Boys

As his 90th anniversary of publishing juvenile or children’s literature fast approaches June 1, author Franklin W. Dixon remains indefatigable. Mind you that could be because Franklin W. Dixon is a pseudonym for the many Franklin W. Dixons there have been over the last nine decades writing Hardy Boys books.

The Hardy Boys series, published by Grosset & Dunlap, began on June 1, 1927, with three titles by ghostwriter Leslie McFarlane, writing under the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon: The Tower Treasure, The House on the Cliff and The Secret of the Old Mill. McFarlane, a Canadian-born journalist, wrote the first 15 or so volumes of the series, establishing the writing style that made the books so successful. Early volumes were published in a cloth hardcover format with colour dust jackets. In 1962, the series switched to a newer cover format with the cover art printed directly on the cover and no dust jacket. In 1979, Simon & Schuster acquired the rights for all new Hardy Boys books.

The son of a school principal, McFarlane was raised in Haileybury, Ontario, located on the northwest shore of Lake Timiskaming, 150 kilometres north of North Bay, and established and named after his English alma mater, Haileybury College, by Charles C. Farr, who had come to the area six years earlier as an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

McFarlane became a freelance writer shortly after high school. He and his family moved to Whitby, Ontario, right next door to where I grew up in Oshawa, in 1936. In fact, McFarlane died in Oshawa in September 1977, at the age of 74.  Before his Hardy Boys non-fame, McFarlane worked as a newspaper reporter in Sudbury, Ontario, Toronto, and briefly in the mid-1920s, in Springfield, Massachusetts as a staff reporter at the Springfield Republican.

Leslie McFarlane is the father of Brian McFarlane, who has written many books himself, and is best remembered as a commentator on CBC Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts between 1964 and 1991, and as an author of almost 100 hockey books, selling more than 1.3 million copies. Leslie McFarlane started writing the Hardy Boys books when his son Brian was around four-years-old.

It was while living in the United States that he replied to an advertisement placed by the Stratemeyer Syndicate for a children’s book ghostwriter. That children’s book would be the Hardy Boys series, which continues to be published. While it’s not altogether clear whether Bayport, said to be located on Barmet Bay, a horseshoe-shaped inlet three miles from the Atlantic Ocean, and the fictional home of youthful sleuths Frank and Joe Hardy, and their parents, Fenton Hardy, a private investigator and retired New York City Police Department (NYPD) detective-lieutenant, who worked in the 71st precinct, and their stay-at-home, Laura, is supposed to be further located in the State of New York (the most likely choice) or New Jersey, or perhaps the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, it is clear the series has an enduring resilience and lasting popularity, not tied to its statehood or who Franklin W. Dixon is this book. The books have been translated into 50 languages.

In 1905, Edward Stratemeyer, a prolific writer in his own right, had founded a network of freelance writers and editors, after realizing he had far more ideas for stories and series than he could write on his own. Writers signed away their rights to royalties and bylines in exchange for a flat fee. Stratemeyer Syndicate’s central aim was to produce a very large number of books at the lowest possible cost.

“The industry that churns out children’s books has changed surprisingly little in the last century,” Daniel A. Gross, a  Boston-based writer and public radio producer, argued in a piece for The Atlantic, “The Mystery of the Hardy Boys and the Invisible Authors” (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/05/hardy-boys-nancy-drew-ghostwriters/394022/), published two years ago in May 2015.

“The secret behind the longevity of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys is simple,” Gross wrote. “They are still here because their creators found a way to minimize cost, maximize output, and standardize creativity. The solution was an assembly line that made millions by turning writers into anonymous freelancers, a business model that is central to the Internet age.”

Having signed away any royalties without regret, McFarlane was paid a flat fee of $100 per book for most of his Hardy Boys books, which he was churning out in prodigious numbers during the 1930s in the midst of the Great Depression, although still wondering when his agent would be able to send another cheque so he might buy more coal for the furnace.  A well-preserved Hardy Boys first edition is now worth about $1,500.

McFarlane eventually moved back to Canada from the United States, working as a writer, producer and director for the National Film Board (NFB) in Montreal, the CBC and, for a time, after moving to Toronto, where he was a friend of actor Lorne Greene, working as a scriptwriter on the 1960s TV hit, Bonanza. As part of the National Film Board in Montreal, he wrote and directed documentaries and short dramas, including the 1951 documentary Royal Journey, Here’s Hockey, a 1953 documentary featuring Montreal Canadiens’ star Jean Beliveau. He also wrote the documentary titled Herring Hunt, nominated for an Academy Award in 1953 for Live Action Short Film.

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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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Lonely Planet, the world-famous travel guide, calls Thompson a town lacking ‘charm’ but ‘a necessary evil for northern itineraries’

Lonely Planet, the world famous and largest travel guide on the planet, started by Tony and Maureen Wheeler more than 40 years ago, has just published an entry simply called “Introducing Thompson,” which can be found at: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/canada/manitoba/thompson, and the result isn’t pretty. Lonely Planet is famous in its own words for telling travelers what a place is like “without fear or favor … we never compromise our opinions for commercial gain.”

Along with Fodor’s and Frommer’s, Lonely Planet is one of the more respected and widely quoted travel guides in the world in what is a fairly crowded field.

What Toronto-based MoneySense magazine did to Thompson last month through its selection of metrics, ranking Thompson 177th out of 209 cities in its best-to-worst places to live in Canada annual survey, released nationally June 1, Lonely Planet did this month in a few brief words.

The Thompson entry begins, “Carved out of the boreal forest by mining interests in the 1950s, Thompson is a necessary evil for northern itineraries. There’s no way around it, the town lacks charm although the boom in minerals means that it has 24-hour fast-food chains, a Wal-Mart and plenty of services.”

It goes onto note, “Thompson is the end of paved roads, and many people catch the lethargic VIA Rail Churchill train from here. The station, in an industrial area 1 km from town, is not a safe spot to leave your vehicle.”

Frankly, while it’s hardly flattering, having lived in Thompson for more than eight years, I find no substantive quibble with it. Which is why I was amused by a Facebook comment in response to a question, perhaps rhetorical, perhaps not, asking, “A hot tourist destination?” where another commenter responded, “Believe it or not we are. Maybe it’s time we look around and see what others see. There are more positives than negatives.”

OK then. Did we read the same article? “Look around and see what others see?” Didn’t Lonely Planet just describe Thompson, Manitoba as a “necessary evil for northern itineraries” and lacking in charm, where it is unsafe to park your vehicle by the train station while travelling to Churchill, although McCreedy Campground  and the Heritage North Museum (“in a small log-cabin stuffed with stuffed local wildlife and history. It has tourist info”) fared marginally better.

If it’s any consolation, Lonely Planet also had some unflattering things to say about places in Ontario like Wawa, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie and North Bay.

“Let’s face it, Sault Ste-Marie is not the prettiest town. In many parts, it’s dreary. Downtown feels like a ghost town and can be sketchy after dark,” that review says.

Or Wawa:  “In the middle of nowhere, enduring winters straight out of a Siberian nightmare, little Wawa is a tough bird.”

As for North Bay, it “bills itself as ‘just north enough to be perfect,’ which begs the question: Perfect for what? It’s just north enough to make visiting Torontonians feel like adventurers, and the lakeshore is lovely, but other parts of town have seen better days.”

In an e-mail statement to CBC News, Lonely Planet said, “If our coverage promotes tourist boards to lift their game a little and improve services in a town and inspire their businesses to lift their game, then I think we’re doing a great job.”

Sudbury fares a bit better in its review, getting some credit for “making something out of nothing  … locals have planted over 12 million trees since 1980, although heavy industry and mining still rule. Sudbury has a university, two fantastic science museums, some cool haunts and chilled locals, but there’s little reason to visit unless you’re passing through.”

Also found in the Lonely Planet entry for Thompson is the somewhat understated, “Centrally located, Interior Inn is typical of the raw-edged motels that abound in town.” Raw-edged motels? I imagine there’s a Jeff Mcinnes column waiting to be written on that.

But the problem is less in Lonely Planet’s descriptors for Thompson, I think, than the fact is that every time this kind of piece appears, or is recycled on Facebook or other social media, it typically triggers three stages of collective local response: Ignore it and hope it goes away (it doesn’t, people everywhere read this stuff about Thompson, as they do other places written about in travel guides and best-of-guides … surprise!); followed by trying to spin the unspinnable into a positive, which lacks all credibility; and then when strategy one and two fail, shoot the messenger (if it’s a Toronto or Melbourne, Australia-based publication, even better).

Every spring for the last 10 years, Toronto-based MoneySense magazine has published a closely watched annual survey, which ranks cities across the country from best to worst places to live in Canada – both overall and in specific categories. In this year’s survey, Thompson tumbled in its worst-ever finish to 177th place from 121st place last year out of 209 cities ranked in 2015 in the annual MoneySense snapshot of Canada. Thompson’s previous lowest placing in the survey was in 2013 when it finished 164th out of 200 cities ranked.

Do rankings or reviews like Lonely Planet and MoneySense really matter? Yes and no, but less so than the foolishness of lashing out reactively against them, burying one’s head in the sand and going into denial about them or just wishing it wasn’t so.

Former Mayor Tim Johnston, in commenting for annual MoneySense rankings stories on Thompson, used to say somewhat philosophically “it is what it is.” While the then mayor was interested in seeing the annual survey results, one got the impression he wasn’t losing any sleep over whether Thompson was up or down in a given year.

Me, I’m OK with how reviews like Lonely Planet or surveys like MoneySense play out, and feel no need to sugarcoat them or spin them – or go into denial about them.  After all, metrics are not everything. I was fishing on the dock again at Paint Lake yesterday at sunset on a pleasant mid-July evening, while enjoying a Popeye’s burger and fries. On the way home, I saw the first wolf I have seen from the bush here, near Ospwagan Lake, crossing Highway 6 from west-to-east just after 9 p.m.

Metrics are not synonymous with quality of life necessarily.

But a bookstore would be nice. But home is also where the heart is.

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