The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Two Flin Flon icons are teaming up to help the community celebrate a milestone. A miner and a Bomber appear on a soon-to-be-released commemorative coin marking Flin Flon's 80th anniversary. 'This coin will act as a calling card for Flin Flon and area and...proudly highlights the 80th anniversary of Flin Flon,' said Kory Eastman, president of the Flin Flon and District Chamber of Commerce, which plans to launch the coin next month. At Tuesday's chamber meeting, Eastman unveiled the winning design for the coin, submitted in a contest by Denare Beach's Craig Cowper and his daughter Abigail, 9. 'We had a lot of fun coming up with the drawing and talking about ideas and finally putting them to paper and submitting them,' Craig said. Abigail, an aspiring artist, won't soon forget the moment she learned that she and her father had won the design contest. 'I was just really excited,' said Abigail, who is entering Grade 5 at Creighton Community School. The front of the coin depicts a miner and a Flin Flon Bomber hoisting a large number 80. Encircling them is a border that reads '80 Years of Community.' The back promotes the chamber and its website, and includes a mostly red map of Canada. Manitoba and Saskatchewan stand out as the former is green and the latter yellow. While many people will purchase the coins as souvenirs, they are actually designed for inclusion in caches sought by those modern-day treasure hunters known as geocachers. 'We have done some geocaching and have a lot of fun with it,' said Craig, a mining health and safety coordinator who works in northern Saskatchewan. 'So this is a nice touch to be able to add our own personal touch to something that we like to do ourselves.' The geocaching theme figures prominently into the coin design. See 'Starting' on pg. Continued from pg. The border around the miner and Bomber depicts a geocacher's starting point, represented by a flag, and the cache, shown as a box bearing a treasure-map-like 'X.' Footprints lead from the flag to the cache. The map of Canada, with Manitoba and Saskatchewan highlighted, and the promotion of the chamber website are also aimed at geocachers. This, Eastman said, 'will help worldwide geocache hunters understand where Flin Flon is, providing a location on the familiar map of Canada and advertising the Flin Flon chamber website where they can investigate our community and get more information.' The Cowpers went low-tech with their design, submitting hand-drawn pictures to the chamber. Once their design was chosen, The Reminder agreed to provide some final tweaks, with graphic artist John Bettger doing the honours. Joining the Cowpers at Tuesday's meeting, held at the Friendship Centre Restaurant, was Mayor George Fontaine, who enthusiastically praised the designers. 'On behalf of the City of Flin Flon, it's nice to see our anniversary theme, it's nice to see a family working together to provide us with our theme,' he said. 'That makes it an even more lovely story, and so on behalf of the City of Flin Flon, I appreciate what you've done here. Thank you.' Shortly thereafter, chamber members voted to mint 750 copies of the coin at cost of just under $5,000. By selling the coins at $10 apiece, the chamber hopes to turn a profit of more than $2,000, but that's a secondary consideration to the promotion of Flin Flon and area. Eastman said the chamber sold more than 700 copies of its first geocache coin, released last year and designed by local artist Theresa Wride. 'I am proud of the two coins that we have been able to produce, and I think they're just beautiful and I think they represent the area well, so thank you to the designers,' Eastman said. In addressing the Cowpers, Mayor Fontaine referred to the success of last year's coin and the anticipated popularity of this year's edition. 'I am both pleased and upset with you, because the last (coin) cost me a lot of money,' the mayor said, tongue in cheek. 'It made a lovely coin last time and I tried to give some, for example, to my grandchildren. While they wouldn't put them in the geocache, they had to keep one at home, so for every one I bought I had to buy a second one so that they could actually use it. I'm afraid you're going to be causing the same kind of thing again, so thanks a lot.' Eastman said the plan is to begin selling this year's coins at Flinty's Birthday on Aug. 18 at the Station Museum. For their efforts, the Cowpers each accepted $50 gift certificates courtesy of North of 53 Consumers Co-op. They will also receive five copies of the coin. The chamber initially got the idea for a geocache coin from Manitoba's Interlake region, which has also produced such a coin to tout itself.
