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 aren't even supposed to be here. When an upstart company 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 2010. We proved everybody wrong, for not only are we still here, we're thriving. We know firsthand that our license plates would not read "Friendly Manitoba" if not for places like Flin Flon. You need not be here long before you're garnering a constant string of hellos and how-are-yas during a jaunt to the grocery store or bank. We know, or at least did know until recently, what it's 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 have moved to Flin Flon "for a year or two" who are here 30, 40 or even 50 years later, still loving every minute of it. We know that the grass isn't 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 it's 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. "Flim Flam?" they ask, unable to comprehend the two strange words we call home. We know what it's like to find mosquito bites in places we didn't know we had, and to see only a smidgeon of humour in coffee mugs declaring those blood-sucking pests Flin Flon's official bird. We know what it's 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 an Saturday afternoon television show await. We know what it's like to curse the winter but at the same time greet it because it is, after all, the only time we get to see our Bombers in action or zoom across Ross Lake on our snowmobiles. We know many other things, like the feeling of wooden sewer boxes beneath our feet and of scanning the rock corridors that envelope our highways for colourful new graffiti. We are Flin Flonners sharing the Flin Flon experience, and there's no place we'd rather be. Enjoy the Trout Festival, everybody. Local Angle runs Fridays.
