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Adventure Traveler Garry Sowerby in his own words
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Sudbury, Ontario
Environmental Initiative #43
The Climate Change Show,
Science North, Sudbury, Ontario
More people visit Science North every year than live in Sudbury
and Mission Green now understands why.
It's the people. The people involved in Science North are friendly,
approachable, highly intelligent and, above all, extremely passionate
about their facility and what they're doing here. Our four hosts
today are fine examples of this passion.
We were captivated by Franco Mariott, Staff Scientist, Guy Labine,
Director of Business Development, Richard Wannan, Corporate Relations
and Business Development Officer and Connie Shaughnessy and their
stories about Science North's conception and development for more
than 2 hours this afternoon and could have easily stayed until
tomorrow!
The Centre opened in June 1984 (Happy 20 th birthday!). Discussions
about the idea of a science centre in Sudbury had been going on
since the 1950s. INCO, the predominant nickel mining company in
the Sudbury area, instigated the discussions as well as feasibility
studies for sites and concept. With studies completed, INCO invested
$5 million, the largest single corporate donation to a community
project in Canadian history at that time, and Science North was
born.
The facility is an impressive glistening structure, built of stainless
steel, the key ingredient of which is Sudbury's nickel, with a
glass exteriour. Science North's buildings, perched on top of a
rock crater, are in the shape of a snowflake. The snowflake is
symbolic of the glaciation that sculpted Canada's northern landscape.
A snowflake is also a crystal, the basic component of so many natural
minerals. The rock crater is symbolic of the Sudbury Basin.
Why this site? It seemed the choice was written
in the stars (or the earth). Sudbury owes much of its economic
history to the catastrophic global event that occurred here 1.85
billion years ago, evidenced by the rock specimens of 'shatter
cones' found on the site. A meteorite 10-20 km in diameter hit
the earth here with a force equivalent to 10 billion Hiroshima
bombs. If there had been humans on the planet at the time, there
wouldn't have been any left. The dust cloud from the impact would
have taken care of that. The extreme force of the impact, creating
a crater 20 km deep, disintegrated the meteorite and melded the
surrounding rock together to form the Sudbury Basin, with its
rich, relatively easy-to-access nickel-ore.
Science North is recognized as one of the top
5 science centres in the world and the 'Blue Coats', the exhibit
interpreters who range from students to scientists, are one of
the major reasons for that distinction.
The Climate Change Show, an object theatre presentation and travelling
exhibit with a fast-talking sheep that educates audiences about
the serious topic of climate change in a fun way, was the reason
Mission Green was here today.
The Climate Change Show is incredible, no other word for it. I
can understand why Canadian Geographic honoured it with an award
in the Climate Change catergory. It is right on! It really made
us think about the causes and consequences of greenhouse gas emissions,
but with no preaching aspect at all.
"We take complex ideas and make them relevant so people know
how to take action," Guy tells us.
We came out of Science North into the brilliant
sunshine to see a crowd had gathered around our vehicles. Patrons
going into the centre thought the vehicles were a science exhibit.
We acted as 'Blue
Coats' for a while, explaining the technology of the vehicles and
giving them information on Mission Green. It took us half an hour
to extricate ourselves from the enthusiastic group.
Our experience here at Science North today reinforced our Mission
to me, the reasons why we're doing this cross-country salute. To
let people know that, yes, humans have had negative habits and
practices in the past but positive strides and actions are being
taken today by ordinary Canadians.
The Mission Green team felt re-energized, inspired and passion-infused
as we headed north to Timmins.
http://sciencenorth.ca/indexE.html
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/cea2004/en/climate.asp
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Environmental Initiative #44
The Citizens of Sudbury,
for the Greening of Sudbury, Ontario The land surrounding Sudbury has had a hard go. Starting with
that blasted meteorite that slammed into the area 1.85 billion
years ago (see #43 for more details).
During a visit to the area a bit closer in history (late 1800s)
to present day, you would have seen a thriving forest of the largest
population of Red Pine and White Pine in the world.
Most of these beautiful trees were cut to provide timber for the
rebuilding of Chicago after its great fire in 1871. Also during
this time, during construction of the railway being built to transport
the lumber, nickel deposits were discovered in the rock.
More excavations, more chopping down of trees
to get to the nickel-ore. the
total extinction of the once-magnificent forests was inevitable.
And then came the soil erosion. Over a metre of soil was lost
in the coming decades.
As if that wasn't enough, mining practices at the time weren't
so kind to the land. In order to extract the nickel from the ore,
it would be melted out. Logs would be placed in an area as large
as three football fields, nickel-ore placed on top of the logs
and the whole thing would be put aflame. The pyre would burn for
up to 8 days.
The sulfur emissions from this process killed whatever vegetation
was left and etched a permanent blackness into the rock.
How could Sudbury ever recover?
A timely discovery that lime spread over the area would neutalize
the damage and would, once again, allow vegetation to grow got
the citizens of Sudbury thinking that land reclamation was possible.
In 1978, the Regional Municipality of Sudbury took on the ambitious
program to restore 10,000 hectares of the barren land.
Meanwhile, a downturn in the nickel industry
forced hundreds of miners out of work. The City mobilized the
unemployed miners to become 'limers' and soon hopeful plants
began to appear on the land.
Sudbury today -- what an in-your-face example of Nature and humans
resolutely working to right the wrongs of the past.
I recall my first drives across the country and coming through
Sudbury, a black other-worldly place.
My mum has a French expression that we use
when making a surprising comeback from a 'skunk' position during intense Sunday night card
games: "It's a vire-veau!!" we shout triumphantly.
And as we pulled out of Sudbury this afternoon, I couldn't help
but think, this is what the citizens must have been feeling when
the fruits of their labours began to sprout on what had for so
long been a barren, lifeless moonscape. A vire-veau of heroic proportions.
http://www.sudburysoilsstudy.com/EN/overview/background.asp
http://www.iclei.org/LEICOMM/LEI-022.HTM
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