Our Man At Thompson

Generally, little is heard of that other Inco — the nickel operations 400 air miles north of civilization and known as Thompson, Man. When it was announced in December, 1956 in The Northern Miner newspaper, the wilderness project came with a $175 million price tag. It included the building of a townsite for 10,000 people (now 15,000), a hydroelectric plant, two mines, a concentrator, a smelter, a refinery and related transportation facilities. It was a mammoth 4-year undertaking that was planned to increase Inco’s annual nickel production to 385 million lb. — a 130-million-lb. boost from earlier levels. The deposit has been producing nickel now for nearly 30 years, and there is no sign of exhaustion. In fact, Inco recently pledged to spend C$287 million to sink three new shafts at Thompson.

Before the announcement was made, we dispatched our new Technical Editor David Scott to Thompson to review current operations and find out what developments were on the drawing board. Scott is no stranger to mining nor to the nickel business. He had been an engineer on the Falconbridge staff for years before leaving in 1982. A stint at the Zambian copper fields followed before he established his own consulting outfit researching new techniques for liberating minerals from refractory ores. He came to the magazine because, he says, it offered an entirely new set of challenges.

The Thompson visit was his first challenge, and I think you’ll find in the mine visit stories he filed for this issue that not only does he know mining, but he also has a knack for conveying complex information in highly readable form. For Scott, the Thompson visit was his first crack at his new profession. For the magazine, it also marked a first — we had not visited Thompson before.