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.
It wasn't that long ago that northern Manitoba was the mining industry's oyster. Every week, it seemed, some company or another reported (apparently) promising news from a mineral property near Snow Lake or, less commonly, Flin Flon. It was easy to get caught up in the hype and envision our region on the cusp of a mineral boom to be fueled by new mines and the restarting of old ones that had long sat silent. If all went well, we were going to see new mines in or near Denare Beach, Sherridon and Cranberry Portage. We were going to witness the rebirth of the long-idle Tartan Lake gold mine outside Flin Flon, and the former New Britannia gold mine in Snow Lake. In reporting on all of this perceived potential for The Reminder, I always tried to mix in appropriate amounts of caution. Just because a company says it wants or plans to develop a mine at some unspecified future date does not mean said mine will ever materialize. In fact, in a crapshoot industry like mining, the odds are heavily stacked against any single mineral property ever becoming a full-fledged mine. My caution was warranted, as only two Snow Lake-Flin Flon region sites _ Lalor and Reed _ are actually in the process of becoming mines. What reinforced the need for journalistic prudence around mineral properties is a conversation I had with a geologist friend in the fall of 2009. He had been reading Reminder articles about ongoing exploration at three specific ore bodies in the region. Known long ago He told me that while the companies that now owned these properties were desperate to make their finds seem new, the sites were in fact known long ago. He further told me that the properties were never going to amount to much and, in so many words, suggested the applicable companies were overplaying their claims in order to sell stock. Almost four years later, my geologist friend has been vindicated. I can't recall the last time I heard anything about any of the three properties he mentioned that day. We still hear updates on a number of other properties, though, but it's nothing like it was from 2007 to 2011, and to a lesser extent 2012. Some people blame First Nations anti-mining protests for scaring away investors. In reality, the downturn in the Canadian mineral sector has spooked many investors across the country. As The Northern Miner put it in a recent editorial: 'The Canadian mining industry staggered and gasped to complete the first half of 2013, a little dehydrated and cramped, and trying to summon the strength to get through the rest of the year in competitive shape.' The result has been dramatically reduced exploration levels across the nation, and our neck of the woods is no exception. Which means that we're hearing much less about mediocre projects that were never going to be mines. But it also means that legitimately feasible properties _ and surely there are a few out there _ may not be discovered for some time. That's just the way it is in mining, this high-cost, high-risk business on which our region depends. Local Angle runs Fridays.
