Fewer towns spring up around mines in the wilderness

Strung out across Canada are 115 communities dependent on mining for their economic base.

Familiar place names spring to mind: Yellowknife, N.W.T.; Faro, Yukon; Kimberley, B.C.; Flin Flon, Man.; Timmins, Ont.; Rouyn-Noranda, Que.; Bathurst, N.B.

Between 1981 and 1986, only a single town, Tumbler Ridge, B.C., sprang up as a result of mining activity, according to a study for Energy, Mines and Resources Canada and Labour Canada conducted by Keith Storey and Mark Shrimpton of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Memorial University in Newfoundland. Tumbler Ridge’s future is already shaky. The coalfields that support the community economically are just barely rich enough in grade for the mining company, Quintette Coal Ltd., to stay solvent. The residential and commercial districts of this community, southwest of Dawson Creek, B.C., cost $274 million ($45,700 per capita) to build in the early 1980s.

During the period studied by Shrimpton and Storey, closures occurred at Port Radium in the Northwest Territories; Uranium City, Sask.; Schefferville, Que.; and Buchans, Nfld. And all the while, several long-distance commuting (LDC) mines sprang up. In fact, 15 commuter mines have followed since the first appeared, in the Ungava region of northern Quebec in 1972. Among the more notable are the Polaris zinc-lead mine on Little Cornwallis Island in the high Arctic; the Lupin gold mine in the Northwest Territories tundra 190 km north of the treeline; the rich Key Lake uranium mine in the Athabaska Sandstone Basin of northern Saskatchewan; and Detour Lake, a gold mine owned by Placer Dome Inc., in northeastern Ontario.

Formally, a commuter mine is one in which food and lodging are provided at the mine site for workers. They spend a fixed number of days on site in an upscale version of the ancient bunkhouse, followed by a spell at home, usually a week or more.

Cameco’s Key Lake residence in northern Saskatchewan resembles a frontier fishing lodge. Lupin can house and feed 240 at a time. Each room is wired for cable TV and satellite, presumably for hardcore couch potatoes. Recreational facilities include ice rink and ball diamond, racquetball and squash courts, billiard and weight rooms, sauna and Jacuzzi, and a library. The rotational schedules and home points for workers vary: generally, the more northerly the mine the longer the rotation. At Key Lake, workers are on the job seven days, at home seven days; at Lupin, 14 and 14; at Polaris, 63 and 21. The 477 workers at Key Lake (the workforce at the time of the Shrimpton and Storey study) fly in from points south, largely from Saskatoon, Prince Albert and La Ronge, where 392 Key Lake employees are drawn. Another 85 come from tiny northern outposts, such as Fond du Lac, Stony Rapids, Wollaston Post and Black Lake.