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Foggy morning in the town of Copper Cliff, Ontario, the heart of the nickel mining industries of the Sudbury Basin. This view is facing a small memorial dedicated to the Italian miners who settled in the region around the year 1900, adorned w/ several large cut slab boulders that were highly magnetic. In the backdrop one can see the Inco Superstack, which was completed in 1972 & remained the tallest superstack chimney in the world for 15 years until the construction of the Ekibastuz GRES-2 Power Station superstack in Kazakhstan. It was also the tallest free-standing structure in Canada until completion of the CN Tower in Toronto.
Such superstacks were built high up w/ the intent of winds up above carrying the emitting pollution away from the immediate area. Prior to that, living situations here resulted in health issues. This is particular evident as you drive through the region where much of the exposed bedrock outcroppings are pitch black, the result of decades of charcoal pollution staining until more recent environmental controls. Much of the old growth forests had also perished leaving Sudbury in the midst of open bedrock. Today this stack as well as other large stacks of various mining corporations highlight the skyline.
Mining has historically & still is part of life in the Sudbury Basin. Here at Vale Inco, metals extracted & smelted include nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, gold, & silver. Iridium of course is extremely rare on our planet but is common in extraterrestrial objects, which coincides to the comet impact 1.849 billion years ago that created the Sudbury Basin. The same is true for this nickel deposit, being among the largest in the world.
More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inco_Superstack
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The capital of Canada is Ottawa, in the province of Ontario. There are offically ten provinces and three territories in Canada, which is the second largest country in the world in terms of land area.While politically and legally an independant nation, the titular head of state for Canada is still Queen Elizabeth.On the east end of Canada, you have Montreal as the bastion of activity. Montreal is famous for two things, VICE magazine and the Montreal Jazz Festival. One is the bible of hipster life (disposable, of course) and the other is a world-famous event that draws more than two million people every summer. Quebec is a French speaking province that has almost seceded from Canada on several occasions, by the way..When you think of Canada, you think of . . . snow, right?But not on the West Coast. In Vancouver, it rains. And you'll find more of the population speaking Mandarin than French (but also Punjabi, Tagalog, Korean, Farsi, German, and much more).Like the other big cities in Canada, Vancouver is vividly multicultural and Vancouverites are very, very serious about their coffee.Your standard Vancouverite can be found attired head-to-toe in Lululemon gear, mainlining Cafe Artigiano Americanos (spot the irony for ten points).But here's a Vancouver secret only the coolest kids know: the best sandwiches in the city aren't found downtown. Actually, they're hidden in Edgemont Village at the foot of Grouse Mountain on the North Shore."It's actually worth coming to Canada for these sandwiches alone." -- Michelle Superle, VancouverText by Steve Smith.
