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.
Jodi Muzylowski wasn't even a year old when she left Flin Flon, but her fascination with the chilly mining town has never faded. Now the Vancouver television producer hopes to tell the story of the town in a documentary film complete with historical details and interviews with residents. "There are many great characters and survival stories in Flin Flon," she said. "The population has fluctuated and gone through hard times, but it seems to keep surviving. There are so many other towns and mines that come and go so quickly, but Flin Flon perseveres." Muzylowski, an editor and researcher for CBC-Television's Canada Now news program, is in the process of applying for grants and trying to determine the direction of the project. Just how the documentary might be shown ? be it on Canadian television as a general interest piece, in Manitoba classrooms as an educational film, or through some other format ? would depend on where the funding comes from. "I'm still putting out feelers to see if anyone would be interested in providing funding," she said. "I'm fairly optimistic that would be the case given that Flin Flon was sort of the birthplace for a lot of the older mining and exploration guys from the early days of HBMS." The best case scenario would see the documentary completed by the spring of 2006. If all of the pieces come together, Muzylowski plans to bring her camera to Flin Flon to shoot footage and interviews in the summer of 2005. It would be her first time back to her birthplace since she was 12 and her family vacationed here, a trip she still recalls with a smile. "Flin Flon was a another world to me, living in Vancouver," she said, adding that she remembers the houses atop the rocks, above-ground sewer boxes and plenty of bugs. Muzylowski's father, Mike, inspired her to consider the project with intriguing stories of the 20 years he spent in Flin Flon working at HBMS. "I am fascinated by the folklore of your town and think that other people need to know and see Flin Flon," she said. "It really does hold a special place in the history of Canadian mining. This film would also be a great opportunity to elevate the profile of Flin Flon as a truly exciting place." Muzylowski began researching the history of Flin Flon in August, spending hours making phone calls, sending e-mails and surfing the Internet. See 'A' P.# Con't from P.# "I've always been interested in Canadian history and this seems like a quirky part of Canadian history in that the name of Flin Flon comes from a character in a science fiction novel, The Sunless City," she said. A graduate of the television broadcast program at the B.C. Institute of Technology, Muzylowski is no stranger to movie productions. She filmed, edited and co-wrote a documentary, later shown at a biodiversity conference in Holland, about a teacher educating students on endangered species around the world. Muzylowski also directed and produced "A Dying Art," a 30-minute drama that played at a Vancouver theatre. The producer believes the story of Flin Flon would appeal to an audience much broader than those familiar with the community. "I think primarily it would be of interest to people that came out of that area and out of Manitoba, but it would also be of interest to people who like Canadiana," she said.
