Flin Flon has caught the attention of Canada’s leading newsmagazine – and for good reason.
Included in The Maclean’s Book of Lists, Vol. 2, now on newsstands, are “6 strange and remarkable facts about Flin Flon.”
The list includes the standard array of Flin Flon factoids, such as our name coming from Josiah Flintabattey Flonatin, protagonist of the dimestore novel The Sunless City.
It mentions Flin Flon native Dr. Frank Gunston, the medical innovator credited with developing the world’s first total-replacement artificial knee.
There’s a reference to Bobby Clarke and Ken Baumgartner, and the fact that at least 15 other NHLers came out of our fair city.
And Maclean’s would have been remiss, apparently, without mentioning us as the former “home to Canada’s largest legal grow-op” by virtue of “Health Canada’s medical-marijuana needs.”
But a couple of items among these half-dozen tidbits will catch even lifelong ’Flonners by surprise.
Number four on the list: “In the 1950s, Flin Flon flirted with independence from Manitoba. The Flin Flon Chamber of Commerce very briefly considered a proposal to carve out a large chunk of northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta to form a new province, to be called Pre-Cambria.”
Did you know that? I certainly didn’t.
Or how about number five: “In 1943, hundreds of servicemen from Flin Flon were invited to descend on Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square for a raucous reunion that lasted from morning to midnight, drinking at least one bar dry. As a dispatch from London noted: ‘The manager had never seen Flin Floners (sic) in action before and his voice was full of wonder and regret when he had to inform them the well had run dry.’”
Interesting... very interesting.
The Maclean’s Book of Lists, Vol. 2, is available at www.macleans.ca/ bookoflists, in the iBookstore, and on newsstands now.
