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.
By Jonathon Naylor What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, we could take a leisurely drive through our city and observe a broad spectrum of landmarks connecting our past with our present. We can still do that today, of course, but our path is not nearly as cluttered. As buildings and structures have aged and grown obsolete, they have fallen one by one like a row of historic dominoes. Since 2000 we have bid farewell to the old Ross Lake School, the old Custom Tailored Suits building, the last of the company housing, and numerous homes in which early residents found shelter (including the only remaining house on Main St.). In 2001, crews brought down the Ross Lake Curling Rink, where generations of curlers forged pleasant memories over countless winter nights. A 2006 fire decimated the former Mr. Ribs Restaurant, a building with all sorts of stories to tell. Opened as W.F. Hughes' General Store in 1929, it went on to house Abe Ostry's grocery store, a Salisbury House restaurant, and a Styleright clothing store, among others. Just within the last year and a half, we have lost HBMS's South Main head frame, the "smoke" in smoke stack, and the North Main head frame. South Main head frame, that towering red barrier that divided Flin Flon and Creighton, had for years been abandoned when contractors pulverized it in July 2009. The smoke stack Ð whose raison d'tre was the HBMS copper smelter Ð puffed for the final time in June 2010 when the smelter shut down. The move was good for the environment and, no doubt, our health, but our skyline has not been the same since. Immortalized And less than two weeks ago, in a spectacular sight immortalized on YouTube, North Main head frame was felled. The event carried particular meaning since this was Flin Flon's first head frame, marking the spot where our city began like an X on a treasure map. More historical shakeups await in the coming years. The armoury, that stalwart link to our city's time as a military outpost, is on borrowed time. Abandoned and in recent years targeted by vandals, this city-owned structure has stood for more than five decades. Willow Park Curling Rink remains active, but with our aging, shrinking population, one wonders how much longer it can be sustained. And as new homes are constructed throughout Flin Flon, Creighton and Denare Beach, older ones Ð many dating back to the 1930s and never meant to last this long Ð continue to be forsaken. For better or worse, we are losing much of our past, at least in the physical sense, though the Flin Flon that was will live on in the imaginations of residents. Still, one can't help but notice what a difference a decade makes. Local Angle runs Fridays.
