Greater Sudbury's history begins as a small outpost for the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1883, as the transcontinential railway was nearing completion, blasting in an area now known as the Sudbury Basin revealed high concentrations of nickel deposits. Much like the well-documented American gold rushes, this nickel discovery brought in a flood of European settlers, who wanted to reap the rewards of mining. By the end of the railroad construction in 1884, Sudbury's population had exploded and for years afterward the region became a mining hotbed.
Mining quickly overtook the region's primary industry, logging, but also suffered considerable booms and busts with supply and demand. In WWI, the mines resurged with the demand of nickel for artillery. The city also recovered more quickly than others from the Great Depression of the 1930s - again due to the demand for nickel. Of course, this heavy mining also carried an environmental cost and almost all plant life was killed. The area became famous for its black-coated rocks and acid rain. But this has all changed.
Today Greater Sudbury refers to a conglomeration of regions including Walden, Valley East, and Onaping Falls. Sudbury has also worked tirelessly on restoring its natural habitat. But it has not lost sight of its history. A visit here will provide you with amazing oppoturnities not found elsewhere. Go underground into a mine to witness a day in the life of a miner, visit several on-site museums with artifacts from mining ghost towns, or hike the basin to see its many natural geological wonders.
To read up on the area and the people who settled here long ago, check out Oiva Saarinen's Between A Rock and a Hard Place - a detailed history of the Finnish population that helped build the region into what it is today. Also worth reading is Matthew Heidl's novel The City Still Breathing - which begins with a strange murder in the town.
Other Tours to Consider:
Northern Ontario Silver and Gold Mining Tour
Enrich your experience by reading books about the places on your tour!
Mirrors of Stone delves into the many ethnic cultures that thrived in the mining areas of Northern Ontario from the 1920s to the 1960s. The stormy history of hardrock mining camps has never fit into the comfortable cliches by which Canada ?tells its story.? Angus unearths the dark sides of this history??the wild tales of bootleggers, mobsters, and prostitution rings? and in so doing opens up new ways of seeing Ontario?s history and culture.
Ontario Rocks tells this fascinating 3 billion year long story of Ontario's geological evolution, from its beginnings as part of an early landmass called Arctica, its incorporation into enormous supercontinents, through to the repeated ice ages and abrupt climatic changes of the last few thousand years. Merging Canadian geology with global evolution, this highly illustrated survey also touches on the development of Ontario's mining and oil industries, and the commercial use of rocks as building material.
A dead body is found on the side of Highway 17 outside Sudbury. Naked, throat slashed, no identification. It disappears from the back of a police van and begins a strange odyssey, making its way, over the course of one early winter day, all around the northern Ontario town and through the lives of eleven very different people.
Headframes dominate the landscape of mining communities in Northeastern Ontario and Northwestern Quebec. Distinctive structures built to house the apparatus at the head of the mine shaft, headframes tower above their surroundings, reminding every resident that without the mine, there would be no reason for their settlement to exist.
In this memoir Penny Petrone tells what it was like growing up in Northern Ontario as the daughter of parents who moved to Canada from the class-bound feudal society of Southern Italy during the first quarter of the century when America was the dream of millions of Europeans.
Canadian Shield traces the geologic evolution of the Shield, its first tentative exploration by humans starting 11,000 years ago as the last great ice sheets withdrew, its changing economic fortunes as Europeans penetrated its remote rocky vastnesses for furs and metals, and its transformation in the twentieth century into a national icon to Canadians.
Based on in-depth oral interviews with local residents, and rich archival sources,We Lived A Life and Then Some relates the common person?s struggle to overcome harsh working conditions and government neglect. The unique culture of the hardrock mining town of Cobalt is exposed through the eyes of retired miners, young welfare mothers, and grade-school children. Angus and Griffin reveal why, in spite of great adversity, Cobalt remains a distinctive and cohesive working-class community.
From Meteorite Impact to Constellation City is a historical geography of the City of Greater Sudbury. The story that began billions of years ago encompasses dramatic physical and human events.
Where else can that well-known phrase be better applied than to a study of the Finns in Sudbury? ?Rock? defines the physical reality of the Sudbury setting: rugged hills, mines, farms and forests set in the Precambrian Shield. ?Hard? defines the human setting: Finnish immigrants having to contend with the problems and stresses of relocating to a new culture, with livelihoods that required great endurance as well as a tolerance for hazardous conditions.
