A recent “big blast,” marking the development of one the largest mining projects in Canada, has ushered in a new era for a camp that got its start 85 years ago.
In 1915, Tom Creighton (1874-1949) and five fellow prospectors from the Amisk Lake region, near the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border, staked what they believed to be a gold deposit.
Creighton and his team had set out to emulate Prof. Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin, a central character in the dime novel The Sunless City by Joyce Emerson Preston Muddock. Flontalin found a strange world under the Rocky Mountains paved with gold, which would have been the envy of Midas.
The claims were on the eastern shore of a small body of water in northern Mantitoba that the prospectors decided to call Flin Flon Lake, in Josiah’s honour. In time, the deposit, which turned out to contain sizeable amounts of copper and zinc, as well as gold and silver, became known as Flin Flon as well.
Flonatin’s legacy was felt again in late June when Logan Kruger, president of
The event launched what will be a 3-year effort on the part of HBM&S to develop its newest and deepest deposit, just north of the original Flin Flon discovery. It contains 14.5 million tonnes of copper-zinc-gold-silver ore.
The 777 mine is the cornerstone of the $400-million 777 project, a 6-tiered plan that will revitalize the mining camp and make Flin Flon (population 7,000) a world leader in zinc production.
Other aspects of the project include a new mine at Snow Lake, expansion and improvements of the processing plants in Flin Flon, infrastructure improvements, and construction of an electrical sub-station.
Kruger told guests that the project is “the culmination of the tremendous effort and co-operation of many stakeholders in gaining the support and resources required to proceed with the 777 project.”
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