Hot August night ...

It's a busy weekend in Timmins. The annual Kayak Challenge and Festival is on. Last night there was fireworks over the river.  They stopped traffic on the bridge so people could watch the show. It was nice. It was a hot August night in Timmins. So hot that the beer tent filled up by 10:00 p.m. and people were turned away. I don't think they'll quit drinking beer...

Ring of Fire ... keep Northern Ontario rocking.

I was amazed today, while covering a news story, to hear a lady talk about the impact of The Ring of Fire. Now for those not in the mining game, Ring of Fire is more than just a Johnny Cash song. The Ring of Fire is the name given to huge series of mining deposits in far Northern Ontario ... way up there by James Bay. It's actually close to the De Beers diamond mine. The woman who is something of a business expert suggested that this mining zone will have the same impact on Ontario as offshore oil on Canada's east coast, or the tar sands in Alberta. That is reassuring. Ontario, thanks to the whiz-boys at Queens Park has become a "have not" province. Twice in the past two years, our credit rating has been scaled back.  So keep buying your cars, cell phones and other consumer goods because it keeps Northern Ontario rocking. By the way, the ring of fire will be mining chromite, a rare mineral that you need for making stainless steel. But you will also find nickel, copper, platinum and palladium. What makes it worthwhile is that this will be one of the largest deposits in the world ... coming from a country that has a stable government. As long as the world doesn't find out that Dalton McGuinty and the Libs are in office. Despite them, mining could eventually make this province wealthy again.

Breaking Bad? Yawwwwwwn...

I've begun watching a new TV series... Well, it's not that new, but it is new to me. Hotel Babylon. I read some reviews and decided to give it a shot. It's on Netflix. Hey, for eight dollars a month, who can complain? So I sat down earlier this week, pressed the remote and was pleased to see that it is produced by BBC. So that's a good thing. Sure enough, I am five episodes into Season-1 and I am pleased. The writing is good and the storylines are cool. I find the actors (and their roles) very likable. Television shows are like books I think. Not everyone agrees on what they like. That's how it is with a show called Breaking Bad. I think Debra told me about it first. And now everyone I ask, just raves about it. Okay, so I tried watching it. First episode... hmmmm, Okay I guess. But I just couldn't get into it. So I let it go for a few months, and tried again. It has won several awards. So I had to give it another shot. Hmmm... nope. Didn't thrill me, or leave me wondering at work what the next episode might be. Maybe next year.
So that's that. Spoke with Jennifer this week and she and her guys are back from a holiday in Newfoundland. They all had a wonderful time. I am pleased, not just for Jennifer, but also for the boys. It is nice they get to see more of our great country.  I guess I take it for granted. When we were kids, Dad was in the RCAF, so living in different parts of Canada was normal.
Debra and John were in Europe! How cool is that? I am confident they had a great time.
Timmins has had a wonderful summer, with so many things going on for the 100th anniversary celebrations.  The annual kayak festival is on this weekend, so that will be a good time.

Lack of attention ...

I like playing Scrabble ... especially on the computer. It's fast and fun and the scoring is a lot easier since the computer does it for you.  But the problem is that the computer recognizes if you are a strong player, and somehow the computer tries to reduce your chances. I noticed it this week. The computer played the word "miasmal" ... oh sure, that's a word we use everyday eh. It means something unpleasant in the air... okay, fine. So I had the letters TTAEION. After a bit of shuffling and with other letters on the board... I was able to spell ATTENTION.  Good word or what?  Here's the thing. Scrabble did NOT recognize the word. WHAT?  Yeah, that's right, the computer said ATTENTION was not recognized. Wham, bam, slam that laptop down! Miasmal... yeah right, something stinks that's for sure!

Spoke too soon...

On the weekend I wrote a little piece about Timmins prospectors and mentioned that a couple of local fellows are still in the game. Well, I spoke too soon. I was to learn Saturday that we lost Don McKinnon. He was 83 and died late last week. What a loss to the mining exploration community. McKinnon, without exaggeration, was legendary. He spoke his mind, was gruff and brusque, but was one of the most successful prospectors Canada has ever produced. He was a rare breed - a mine finder. Very few prospectors can make that claim. McKinnon was an interesting fellow whether he was having dinner with the President of the United States, which  he did (Reagan), or whether you met him for coffee. He was the same guy either way.

Did you hear 'bout the new king of the klondike...he's from Timmins!

Well, I suppose it’s official now. There’s a nice plaque from Heritage Canada installed outside the Timmins Museum that is part of the new display of bronze statues installed there this past week. The plaque says the gold rush here in Timmins became the largest gold rush in Canadian history …  Just so our good Klondike friends in the Yukon know about that.  It was a nice ceremony to mark the 100^th anniversary of Timmins. The bronzes are of Jack Wilson who found the Dome Mine, Benny Hollinger who found the Hollinger Mine and Sandy McIntyre who found the McIntyre Mine… those became The Big Three Gold Mines. The Dome never stopped operating. The Hollinger should begin mining again this year and I know that they’re looking hard at the McIntyre … there’s a fabulous gold zone on the 11-hundred level that’s looking very lucrative.
It's not easy to explain the excitement over gold ... unless you live in a gold town. I talk to a lot of people who live and work here and have businesses, and they all agree, Thank Goodness for gold. No matter what else goes on in the rest of the world, as long as the price of gold holds on, everyone here seems happy.
The mines just keep plugging away and we all know the day will come when the mines will close ... well that has already happened a few times, but they keep finding MORE gold. Everywhere you go within a 100 mile radius of Timmins, gold, gold, gold. There are mines in Kirkland Lake, Matachewan, Gowganda, Matheson, ... and any day now, the new Detour Mine near Cochrane is set to become the largest gold mine in Canada. I know people like gold for jewellery but I am kind of glad that more gold in being used now in industrial applications.
So its nice to honour the pioneering prospectors. But don't forget we still have prospectors living here in Timmins who have become multi-millionaires. They're getting on in years, but they still run prospecting companies. So that's a good thing.


By the way, the're still finding gold in The Klondike. Oh yes. It was just a few years ago that a fellow named Shawn Ryan arrived in The Klondike. After checking out the creeks where gold was discovered back in 1898, he was told that all the creeks had been mined out. Folks said there was no more good gold to be found there.



Well, here's the thing, Ryan is a Timmins boy and he cut his teeth on a prospecting crew with his Dad who worked for Kidd Exploration in Timmins. I met him in May, here in Timmins. Ryan said he took one look at the mountain above all the creeks and said he knew that's where he'd be staking his claims. Sure enough, there's a new gold rush on in the Yukon, and they're finding more new gold.
Shawn Ryan, a Timmins fellow, has been officially dubbed as the new "King of the Klondike"!

Stealing gold, drinking wine and gossip!

So it is indeed time to catch up here. It is one of those things that nags at me. I keep telling myself to put something new on “the blog”. I do so much writing at work that at times I think I have nothing new to add.
That’s not the point of a blog, I believe.
I think the point is to add interesting things. Timmins is changing. I noticed this morning while driving on the back road how much it has changed since I arrived here back in the 1970s. There are so many of the old gold mine headframes gone. The Paymaster Mine, the Buffalo Ankerite, the original Dome No. 8; they’re all gone. I was thinking of this in light of the fact that Kevin Vincent, a colleague, has written a new book about highgraders. Anyone who lives in a gold town knows that highgraders are the people who steal gold and sell it off to organized crime figures.
There have been so many gold thefts over the years in Timmins, I was thinking that if anyone came back to town after being away so long, they wouldn’t know their way around.
Speaking of which, the big Timmins High reunion happens this coming week. What a party that will be. The city is celebrating the official centennial so there will be plenty of fun things going on.
On matters of fun, Jennifer was in town for a quick visit this week. It was a joy to see her of course. She was dropping in to join a family barbecue at Sue’s place. Lorraine and Helen also showed up, as did the gang from here in Timmins. Gerry and John also made the trip to Timmins.
We all missed Tasha of course. I say that because I know that “Ta” drops in here to read every now and then. But seriously, Jenn and I told Helen chatted with Helen and yes, we do miss seeing Tasha. I feel guilty because I, for one, have not made the trip over to Red Lake.
John Bradley also dropped by and that meant smiles and laughs for everyone. John is everyone’s favourite Ex-Brother in law. I know how that feels! Almost!
Anyway it was fun to see Jenn getting ready for the dinner. It was like seeing her back in school again, getting ready for a night out on the town. Getting her clothes ready, make-up, hogging the mirror, the works! So it was a nice night out. Got home at midnight and was ready for bed, but No! Jenn cracked open a fresh bottle of wine and so we sat and gossiped for nearly an hour! It was the best.
Jenn was back on the road the next morning to head back to Sudbury to get ready for her big vacation. She and her guys are all heading to Newfoundland for two weeks. I am confident they will have a fabulous time. She will be getting to meet Scott’s side of the family as Scott’s dad is from The Rock.
Well I am going back to working on this computer for awhile. It was running slow and I think I might have grabbed a virus or something. So on Thursday, I rebooted the entire system with my recovery disks. That means I have been spending hours re-entering all my data and programs. But the good thing is that I got rid of a lot of programs I have not been using. I also found some old games. Last night I spent two hours playing Scrabble against the computer. I lost the first game, but I won the three games after that!
The only thing that bothers me is that all my income tax info from the past year was in a special file and I fear I didn’t back it up. I have all the raw info and hard copies, but it now means I have to re-enter everything. Arrghhhh.

Missing them ...

Tomorrow is back-to-work day after a really nice little bit of vacation time.  I am sort of looking forward to it.  I already checked the e-mail server for work. There are more than 670 e-mails waiting for me. Oh fun! I am, however, feeling in a bit of a withdrawal today. Not because of the holidays, but because I miss the boys. After spending more than a week with grandsons Tyler and Nathan, I got used to the idea of them being there when I woke up in the morning and went to bed at night. It was just plain fun being with them. I guess that being an adult, I had to walk the fine line of being the guardian and keeping them safe, and then finding ways to keep them entertained and busy. The first part was easy. The second part was the challenge. I think there were times I was too worried that they weren’t having enough fun, but kids being kids, they find fun in most things. Jumping on beds, racing through hotel hallways, being first to push the elevator button and spitting at ducks on the Toronto waterfront are the kinds of harmless things boys just like to do. I am glad it all happened.

A little vacation time...

Back in Northern Ontario (at Jennifer and Scott’s place) after enjoying a few days in the city with the boys. We had a fun time visiting the CN Tower, the Royal Ontario Museum and taking in a Blue Jays game. It was all new for the boys and I enjoyed dropping in to Toronto for the first time in a few years. The boys really liked the museum; seeing a pre-ice age moose and mammoth skeletons. I guess I am getting old and jaded. The museum was fun and interesting, the ball game was fun, but the CN Tower and other parts of Toronto really don’t hold a lot of interest for me. Thanks to booking early through Expedia, we stayed at The Royal York hotel and I have to say the service was nothing short of outstanding. I have stayed in a lot of hotels in recent years and The Royal York is still one of the best in the world. The boys liked the idea of jumping on the beds and doing backflips from bed to bed. Hey, you only live once, right.

Another one of the fun parts of the trip was riding the train from Sudbury to Toronto and back again. I still enjoy the VIA train, but sadly it doesn’t appear the government of Canada is willing to re-invest in train travel. I say sadly because we are one of the largest countries in the world and our passenger train service is poor. Compared to the service offered by Amtrak in the U.S. and the trains being run in Europe and the U.K., Canada’s VIA Rail sorely needs to be improved. It’s 2012 and we are still running passenger cars built in the 1950s!

The boys liked eating in restaurants too and they were very well behaved. I think that’s because the rule was they could order whatever they wanted, as long as they ate it. So yes, chocolate and ice cream were popular choices. We enjoyed eating at Gretzky’s, the Hard Rock Café and even fine dining at the Royal York. If you’re going to Gretzky’s enjoy the décor of hockey memorabilia, because the food should be in the penalty box!

Hard Rock Café is always a good choice for me. Burgers, barbecue and beer always goes well on vacation. I never bother to buy the T-shirts, even though in the past two years I have visited the Hard Rocks in Vancouver, Seattle, London, Edinburgh and Toronto. Maybe I should think ahead eh. The best part of coming home to Northern Ontario was enjoying Jennifer's cooking. As a teenager, Jennifer had a hard time figuring out how to boil a pot of water. She is now pretty amazing with her own personal recipe book.

Finally, I have to admit I am enjoying my new smart-phone. The Blackberry enabled me to keep touch so easily with Jenn. It was nice to be able to send text messages so quickly

Still learning ...

Okay so I am still in training on the new ‘toy’ – the Blackberry -- but I have to admit I find it useful already. I hate to admit it, but there is something nice about not rushing back to the office, or the house, to check my e-mail. But here’s the thing… even though the Blackberry can be set up with our corporate e-mail, I haven’t done that. I have flagged a few important contacts and anytime they send a message it goes to my old hotmail account. And that pops up on the screen… instantly.  I am not going to use the phone for the “social media” thing either. I have already deleted the Twitter, Facebook and other social media accounts.
It has quite a few interesting features, a still camera, a video camera, a compass, a very useful GPS tracker, so that’s all cool. The one I find really interesting is the QR-Code reader, which downloads tonnes of info based on those square codes you see everywhere. This one here is for the New York Times. As you might expect I have loaded up several news applications along with direct feeds from the OPP, city police and city hall.

So I guess you could say, yeah, it’s useful.  

I am NOT as smart as my phone...

Well, things change. So I bit the bullet and got a new phone. It's one of those smarty phones. It's a bold blackberry 9900.  I just got off a 25 minute call with the customer service guy and I had to laugh because I didn't know how to end the call... so I put the phone down and looked in the little booklet. Two minutes later I shut the phone off. I figure it will take the better part of the weekend to figure out how to get this thing fired up and running right. The guy said I can watch movies on it. Yeahhh, right. Like I am going to warm up some popcorn, grab a beer and sit down to watch Bridge Over River Kwai on this thing. I can't wait.

Camp Gilla... again

Even though covering news is my passion, I do like to stop and take a break every now and then. Saturday had been a long day covering stories about the big forest fire near Timmins and so when evening rolled around, I was ready to sit back and enjoy a nice dinner. I dropped by Pick of the Crop and grabbed a very nice strip loin and then as I was getting it ready, with a Spanish onion, some mushrooms and a green pepper, I opened a bottle of Beaujolais. Woohoo, this was gonna be good. The phone rang.
It was the communications lady from the forest fire command post. The new fire teams are coming in from BC and I’ve got a seat on the chopper for you, she said. Can you be at the helipad in ten minutes?
Yeahhh, I said. So drop everything, grab the cams and head out.

I got to the helicopter without 30 seconds to spare! I had no idea where we were going, except I could meet some of the fire teams and get photos. Good enough for me.

So up we went over the fire zone. There was a crew from Global National with us, and so our little chopper was packed with people and cameras. The TV guys got the best shots, as expected. I had no problem with that since I wanted a good newspaper story. So we were flying for about 30 minutes when the pilot starts asking if anyone knows precisely where Camp Gilla is? What? I was there two weeks ago. So point out the window at Highway 144, there’s Highway 560 and there’s Camp Gilla. I sure didn’t expect to be back, but once we landed there were about 80 fire crew members from BC there. So that was interesting.

On the way home, the TV guys wanted some close ups of the fire. Our pilot was accommodating. We flew at about 200 feet through the smoke and right above the flames. I’ve never seen anything like that before. We were close to trees, but I wasn’t worried because I was in the back seat. If we hit a tree, it would hit the pilot first! Ha ha ha. Anyway, it was a fun evening and when I got back home at about 10:20, I cooked up a very, very nice steak!

Group Hug!

If you're anywhere near Timmins, one of the things you get to see a lot of are claim posts.  These posts were put up by prospectors on what is obviously a good claim ...  because there are so many posts.  To me it kind of looks like a group hug of claim posts!  It's kind of interesting, because anyone can stake a claim, but it is the first one who gets back to the Mining Recorders office who becomes the owner of the claim.  That's all going to change in the next year or so.  The Ontario government, based in that awful far away place called Toronto, has deemed that claims can now be staked on computers! It sounds modern but it is not. This means that whoever has the fastest computer, or biggest bank of computers (meaning the large corporates) now get the edge over the lowly hardworking prospector who spends his days on the land looking for gold, silver and diamonds. It will be a sad day to see prospectors leaving the land.

More forest fires ...

A bit of excitement Sunday. Another major forest fire broke out south of Timmins. This one caused a massive smoke plume in the sky… was like an eclipse. It just blotted out the sun. I had some explaining to do when a Natural Resources helicopter crew wondered what I was doing in an area they said was too close to the fire. I snapped a photo of them checking out my vehicle. I was on a nearby hilltop getting shots of the fire zone.

Busy week in the bush!

Two things to report on this week. One ... the black flies are out! Oh Yeah, the little buggers were everywhere this week as I had a couple of assignments in the bush. Second item - I saw Don and Denise this week, but I sure didn't expect to see them. They were evacuees from Timmins Forest Fire No.7, which broke out Monday. All the people of Westree were ordered to leave their homes Monday night as the fire appeared to be getting too close. As it turned out, the 200 hectare fire began to move away from the Westree and Morin Village areas on Tuesday. So I drove down Tuesday to snap a few photos. I was able to get past the roadblock and into a remote bush area where I could get a few extra photos. But the wind was carrying embers on the fire and before we knew it, there were little fires popping up all around us, and the whole area began to get very smokey ... so we scooted out of there very quickly. We also dropped by the relief camp where the evacuees were staying. It was nice to say hello and to have a quick chat with Denise and Don and some of their neighbours.

Once there was a real hero ...

This week was interesting in that I spent part of Thursday and then Friday covering the annual competition of the Ontario Mine Rescue teams in Timmins. A lot of people don’t know that Ontario’s own mine rescue program began in Timmins after a terrible fire at the Hollinger Mine back in 1928. Thirty-nine miners died. I wrote a history piece on it for this week’s paper and posted in online as well. One of the most interesting parts came from the testimony at the official Royal Commission inquiry into the disaster. During the inquiry, the story came out about a miner named George Zolob who was trapped with several other men below the 600 level. Poisonous smoke was creeping through the tunnels, but Zolob decided he couldn’t sit there and die. He tore his coveralls into strips of cloth to make primitive face masks for himself and the other six men. Zolob then crawled on his hands and knees through the smoke and darkness to find the shaft leading to surface. Once there he was able to get to the cage (elevator) and get himself and the other miners rescued. Incredible! So here’s the good part. I took a phone call this morning and discovered that Zolob’s daughter is alive, living at the Golden Manor senior’s home. She was pleased with the story and I get to meet her and her son, Zolob’s grandson, on Monday. By the way, the story was told before. It was in the New York Times on February 11th, 1928 … front page! (Click on the image for a larger version.)

Yup, did it again. Silly me!

So I had to do some catch up on my laundry last night... close to midnight. Without thinking, I grabbed the hamper and threw it all in the washer. Only when I pulled my jeans out did I notice the black spot... a big yucky black spot where my pen leaked out. Yep, I left a pen in my jeans pocket. Then I remembered I might have left phone in the pocket too. Yup! Of course, it wasn't working at all so I pulled the battery out and put the phone on a table to dry out. Luckily I had a phone from two years ago sitting in my desk. So I changed the SIM cards and everything is fine. The old phone is working perfectly. I just have to get used to all the buttons again! And I will have to buy some new jeans. Threw the other ones out last night.

Silly photo.

Somedays I shoot a silly photograph at a serious situation. There was a small fire at the Mac's corner store Monday night... the sign out front was a bit funny. So I snapped the photo.

Un - photos. Huh?

So I met a news photographer in Vancouver a couple of years ago who showed me his collection of Un-photographs. Un-photographs are those photos that show up on your digital camera card and you have no idea where they came from. I knew exactly what he meant. My cams are sensitive and sometimes will shoot off a frame or two before I get set up for a news photo. I have seen one or two shots of my shoes that were taken as I had the cams hanging from my shoulder. So this week, I was at a fire scene at about 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday when these Un-photos "happened". Maybe I should start a collection eh?

Global warming ... is over?

Yeah so this was the weather Timmins woke up to this morning. It was only a few weeks ago that we were enjoying sunshine and warm weather, but now this ... yeah, I know, I know... climate change. Well climate is what you're supposed to expect. Weather is what you get.