The 40th anniversary of Hudbay’s smoke stack this year has me waxing nostalgic.
When I was a boy, my idea of a major Saturday afternoon outing was riding the bus uptown with my mom.
On many an occasion, as we’d descend down that big step onto the Community Hall sidewalk, my mouth would become filled with a putrid yet familiar taste.
“The smelter smoke is bad today,” my mom would say.
That it was. Like some sort of toxic peanut butter, this stuff called “smelter smoke” would stick to the roof of my mouth and linger. I would cough and sometimes spit, but I never thought much of it.
Like many born-and-bred Flin Flonners, I knew nothing different. Smelter smoke was
such an everyday part of life that I just assumed
it permeated the air
everywhere.
This notion was reinforced when I once asked my dad why the smoke stack – I called it “the big cigar” – was there. He answered the way parents often do when confronted with queries too complicated for young minds to grasp – he fibbed.
“It’s there so we know which way the wind is blowing,” he said matter-of-factly.
This made perfect sense, as I would often look up (way up!) and watch the prevailing winds ferry those industrial clouds for what looked like miles and miles.
I like to think I’m a somewhat conscientious person, but I was easily in my 20s before I really gave much thought to all those toxins gushing from the stack. And I admit it made me uneasy.
I wasn’t alone. Even
the most unreflective among us had misgivings about that ubiquitous pollution.
More progress
Old-timers frequently remark about how much better things got after the present stack replaced the two “short stacks” in 1974, but they were often the first to assert that there was still more progress to strive for.
As the public grew more earth- and health-conscious in the 1990s and 2000s, Hudbay’s copper smelter, and the adjoining stack, had become a symbol for environmentalists of all that was wrong with Canada’s supposedly lax regulations.
Not that this was entirely fair. Hudbay, then known as HBMS, had invested millions upon millions of dollars to clean up its act. Moreover, the company complied with pollution restrictions placed on it by the powers that be.
To my way of thinking, anyone who was upset by the pollution should have taken their grievances to the government, which dictates appropriate air quality levels.
In any event, with the now-sealed stack more than four years removed from its last output, I still hear people, especially former residents back in town visiting, comment on how much cleaner our air – indeed our entire community – seems.
Maybe it’s psychological on his part, but I even spoke with one senior who insisted he has enjoyed far more vitality since that final stack puff in 2010.
Even though that huge brown tower is no longer “the big cigar,” it is still a fundamental element of what makes Flin Flon,
Flin Flon.
Local Angle runs Fridays.
