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.
Not all Flin Flonners are cut from the same cloth, but we do share the common, wonderful experience of calling this great place our home. As a result, there are certain things that all residents know. We know, first of all, that we arenÕt even supposed to be here. When an upstart company called called Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting launched back in 1927, not even an optimist wearing the rosiest-coloured glasses could have imagined we would still be here in 2008. We proved everyone wrong, for not only are we still here, weÕre thriving. We know firsthand that our license plates wouldnÕt read ÒFriendly ManitobaÓ if not for places like Flin Flon. You need not be here long before youÕre garnering a constant string of hellos and how-are-yas during a trip to the grocery store or bank. We know what itÕs like to look up into the sky, any time of the day or night, and see a giant cigar puffing away, and how the taste of that smoke sticks to your tongue like some kind of toxic peanut butter. We know more people than we can count who moved to Flin Flon Òfor a year or twoÓ who are here 30, 40 or even 50 years later, still loving every minute of it. We know that the grass isnÕt always greener on the other side, for many of us have left only to return to a place that is impossible to forget. This is where we truly belong. We know what itÕs like for the worst of tragedies to bring out the very best in people. As our fellow citizens fall on hard times, we see them lifted back up with fundraising socials and chicken buckets stuffed with wads of donated dollars. On the lighter side, we know that nose-wrinkling look of confusion on the face of a stranger curious about where we are from. ÒFlim Flam?Ó they ask, unable to comprehend the two strange words we call home. We know what itÕs like to find mosquito bites in places we didnÕt know we had, and to see only a smidgeon of humour in coffee mugs declaring those pests as Flin FlonÕs official bird. We know what itÕs like to leave work early (just a little early, of course) on a Friday to head out to the lake, where scenery right out of a painting and fishing worthy of a Saturday afternoon television show await. We know what itÕs like to curse the winter but at the same time welcome it because it is, after all, the only chance we get to see our Bombers in action or zoom across Ross Lake on our snowmobiles. We know so many other things, like the feeling of wooden sewer boxes beneath our feet, of watching a stray golf ball bounce back onto the course after hitting a rock, and of scanning the rocks for colourful new graffiti. We are Flin Flonners sharing the Flin Flon Experience, and thereÕs no place else weÕd rather be. HereÕs to Flin Flon and the next 75 years. Local Angle runs Fridays.
