Greater Sudbury

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Greater Sudbury (2001 census population 155,219) is a city in Northern Ontario, Canada. Greater Sudbury was created in 2001 by amalgamating the cities and towns of the Regional Municipality of Sudbury, along with several previously unincorporated geographic townships.

It is the largest city in Northern Ontario in population, and the 20th largest metropolitan area in Canada. In land area, it is now the largest city in Ontario, the seventh largest municipality in Canada, and the largest municipality in English Canada legally designated as a city.

It is also the only city in Ontario which has two official names -- its name in French is Grand-Sudbury. Unlike designations such as Greater Toronto or Greater Montreal, the name "Greater Sudbury" refers to a single city, not a conurbation of independent municipalities. However, the name Sudbury, without its official modifiers, is still the more common name for the city in everyday usage.

The city's Census Metropolitan Area consists of the city proper and the First Nations reserves of Whitefish Lake and Wanapitei.

History

Sudbury was incorporated as a town in 1883, and as a city in 1930. Originally named Sainte-Anne-des-Pins ("St. Anne of the Pines"), it started as a lumber camp.

During construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, blasting and excavation revealed high concentrations of nickel-copper ore at Murray Mine on the edge of the Sudbury Basin. The community, renamed Sudbury in honour of the CPR commissioner's wife's hometown in England, grew rapidly as a mining town.

Through the decades that followed, Sudbury's economy went through boom and bust cycles as world demand for nickel rose and fell. Demand was high during the First World War, then bottomed out when the war ended. It rose again in the mid-1920s, then fell as the Great Depression hit, and rose again during the Second World War. After the end of that war, however, Sudbury was in a good position to supply nickel to the United States government, who chose to stockpile non-Soviet supplies during the Cold War.

In 1940, Sudbury became the first city in Canada to install parking meters.

In the 1950s and 60s, Sudbury was beset by extensive labour unrest, as Inco and Falconbridge employees not only fought their companies for the right to unionize, but also fought amongst themselves as to what union would represent them.

Banner welcoming wartime hardrock miners, c. October 5, 1942

Both the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers and the United Steelworkers of America had support among Sudbury miners, and there were often riots in the streets as the rival factions confronted each other. Ultimately, the two unions settled into an uneasy truce, with Mine Mill winning the right to unionize Falconbridge, and the Steelworkers winning the right to unionize Inco.

In February 1956, the Mine Mill held its Canadian convention, which was particularly notable for being the first non-US concert given by Paul Robeson after the US government instituted its travel ban against him. The same year, the city approved a natural gas contract with Northern Ontario Natural Gas — the city's mayor at the time, Leo Landreville, was later forced to resign from the Supreme Court of Ontario bench after allegations that he had received stock favours in exchange for the contract.

On August 20, 1970, a tornado struck the city and its suburbs, killing six people and remaining the eighth deadliest tornado in Canadian history.

Labour issues would continue to be Sudbury's dominant economic challenge. In 1979, Inco workers embarked on a strike over production and employment cutbacks, which lasted for nine full months. As Inco was by this time Sudbury's largest employer, the strike decimated Sudbury's economy.

When the strike finally ended in 1980, the city's government recognized the urgent need to diversify the city's economy. Through an aggressive strategy, the city tried to attract new employers and industries through the 1980s and 1990s. Today mining remains an important industry, but Sudbury also derives economic strength as a centre of commerce, government, tourism and science and technology research. Although Inco remains the city's largest single employer, the mining industry is no longer the city's largest sector of employment.

On October 11, 2005, Inco announced a proposal to buy out the operations of longtime rival Falconbridge for $12 billion. If approved, the deal would make Inco the world's largest producer of nickel, and would also bring all of Sudbury's mining operations under the ownership of a single company for the first time in the city's history.

In 2006, there has been renewed debate on the issue of the municipal amalgamation. The former town of Rayside-Balfour, and many of its residents, are unhappy with their position in the city, and have lobbied for a deamalgamation referendum during the 2006 municipal election. City council has refused to endorse such a referendum, although even with the council's endorsement a vote would still have to be approved by the provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Mayor David Courtemanche has, however, appointed former MPP Floyd Laughren to chair an advisory committee to review and make recommendations to improve the quality of city services to the outlying communities.

Government

Prior to 1973, Sudbury comprised portions of the geographic townships of Neelon and McKim.

In 1973, provincially-mandated restructuring of municipal government organized the city of Sudbury and surrounding towns into the Regional Municipality of Sudbury, which consisted of seven municipalities. The population figures cited next to each are for 1996, the last Canadian census before the amalgamated city came into effect:

Municipal responsibilities were distributed between the council of the Regional Municipality and the councils of the individual towns and cities. The region covered 2,607 square kilometres.

In 1979, Sudbury became the first city in Canada to install a TTY line in the mayor's office to help improve service to deaf citizens.

The five towns and two cities of the region, as well as several unorganized townships, were amalgamated by provincial order on January 1, 2001 to become the city of Greater Sudbury. The city is headed by a council and mayor. The main municipal office is at Tom Davies Square, named for a former chair of the Regional Municipality of Sudbury.

The current mayor of Greater Sudbury is David Courtemanche, who succeeded retiring longtime mayor Jim Gordon in 2003.

The city is represented federally by Members of Parliament Diane Marleau in the Sudbury riding, and Ray Bonin in Nickel Belt. Their counterparts in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario are Rick Bartolucci in Sudbury and Shelley Martel in Nickel Belt.

The provincial Ministry of Northern Development and Mines has its head office in the city.

Communities

The name Greater Sudbury is almost exclusively a political designation. In common usage, the city is still generally referred to as Sudbury.

Outside of the region, the name "Sudbury" is still commonly understood to refer only to the former city of Sudbury, with the outlying communities often believed to remain distinct from the city itself. Some of the outlying communities, for example, still retain their own distinct postal and telephone exchange codes — as of 2006, these services have still not been fully integrated into a single citywide system.

In local usage, however, the name "Sudbury" refers to the whole city, although the former municipal names of the Regional Municipality of Sudbury also remain in informal use to designate the different areas of the city.

Communities within the city are listed below. Communities listed in bold are those which are listed as distinct telephone and postal exchanges by Bell Canada and Canada Post:

Geography

The Inco Superstack, seen from Lake Ramsey. Science North is also visible in the foreground.

The ore deposits in Sudbury are part of a large geological structure known as the Sudbury Basin, believed to be the remnants of a 1.85-billion year old meteorite impact crater. Sudbury ore contains profitable amounts of many elements, especially transition metals, including platinum. It also contains an unusually high concentration of sulfur.

Sudbury was known for many years as a wasteland. During the Apollo manned lunar exploration program, NASA astronauts trained in Sudbury, to become familiar with shatter cones, a rare rock formation connected with meteorite impacts. However, the popular misconception that they were visiting Sudbury because it resembled the lifeless surface of the moon dogged the city for years.

When nickel-copper ore is smelted, this sulfur is released into the environment. The sulfur is toxic to vegetation. Carried aloft, it combines with atmospheric water to form sulfuric acid. This contaminates atmospheric water, resulting in a phenomenon known as acid rain. Acid rain erodes rocks and masonry, kills plants, and acidifies soil, discouraging regeneration of vegetation. In the Sudbury area, vegetation was decimated, both by acid rain and by logging to provide fuel for early smelting techniques. The erosion exposed bedrock, which was charred in most places to a pitted, dark black appearance. (There was not a complete lack of vegetation in the region. Paper birch and wild blueberry are notable examples of plants which thrived in the acidic soils.)

In the late 1970s, private, public, and commercial interests combined to establish an unprecedented "regreening" effort. Lime was spread over the charred soil of the Sudbury region by hand and by aircraft. Seeds of wild grasses and other vegetation were also spread. In twenty years, over three million trees were planted. The ecology of the Sudbury region has recovered dramatically, due both to the regreening program and improved mining practices, and in 1992 the city was given the "Local Government Honours Award" by the United Nations, in honour of its innovative community-based strategies in environmental rehabilitation.

Sudbury is on the Canadian (Precambrian) Shield. Over 300 lakes lie within its municipal boundaries, including Lake Wanapitei, which holds the record for the largest lake in the world completely contained within the boundaries of a single city. (Before the municipal amalgamation of 2001, this status was held by Lake Ramsey, which is just a few kilometres south of downtown Sudbury.)

Transportation

Greater Sudbury is served by a number of provincial highways. Highway 17 is the main branch of the Trans-Canada Highway, connecting the city to points east and west. An approximately 25-kilometre (15 mile) segment of Highway 17, from Mikkola to Whitefish, is freeway. As of 2006, this segment is one of only two full freeway segments (the other being Highway 11 southeast of North Bay) in all of Northern Ontario.

Highway 69 leads south to Parry Sound, where it connects to the Highway 400 freeway to Toronto. Highway 400 will eventually be extended to reach Greater Sudbury; although the timetable may be subject to change, this construction is currently scheduled for completion in 2017. Highway 144 leads north to Timmins.

The provincial Ministry of Transportation has announced tentative plans to extend the Highway 17 freeway east to Coniston in the mid-2010s, near the completion date of the Highway 400 construction. Studies have also been completed on the freeway segment's westerly extension as far as Espanola, although no construction timetable has been set. In the longer term, the whole highway may eventually be subsumed into Highway 417, although to date no formal project planning has taken place and that is likely decades away.

The Greater Sudbury Airport is served by regional carrier lines such as Bearskin and Air Canada Jazz. Sudbury is also served by rail and inter-city bus service. The city also maintains a public transit system, Greater Sudbury Transit.

Education and culture

The Big Nickel at Dynamic Earth in Sudbury

Greater Sudbury is home to three postsecondary institutions: Laurentian University, a bilingual university, Cambrian College, an English college of applied arts and technology, and Collège Boréal, a francophone college with additional campuses throughout Northern Ontario. (Boréal does, however, offer a few trade courses in English.) Laurentian University is also home to the Sudbury campus of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM). NOSM is the newest medical school to open in Canada, opening its doors in September of 2005.

Almost 30 per cent of the city's population is Franco-Ontarian, particularly in the former municipalities of Valley East and Rayside-Balfour. The city has, in fact, the largest proportion of francophones to the general population of any city in Ontario. Sudbury is a very important centre in Franco-Ontarian cultural history, and the francophone community of Sudbury has played a central role in developing and maintaining many of the cultural institutions of francophone Ontario. Those institutions include the Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario, La Nuit sur l'étang, La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario, Le Centre franco-ontarien de folklore and the Prise de parole publishing company.

The Franco-Ontarian flag, as well, calls Sudbury home. It was first flown in 1975, at Laurentian University.

Sudbury has lent its mining heritage to two major tourist attractions: Science North, which is an interactive science museum built atop an ancient earthquake fault on the shore of Lake Ramsey, and Dynamic Earth, an earth sciences exhibition which is also home to the Big Nickel, one of Sudbury's most famous landmarks. Another city landmark, the Inco Superstack, is the world's tallest free standing chimney. As well, the Creighton Mine site in Sudbury is the site of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, a major scientific research facility.

Sudbury is also home to the Sudbury Theatre Centre, the Cinéfest film festival, the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra, the Art Gallery of Sudbury, the annual Northern Lights Festival Boréal folk festival, and numerous community museums. The CBC Television series Chilly Beach, an animated comedy, is produced by a Sudbury firm, March Entertainment.

Sudbury hosted the International Physics Olympiad in 1997.

Sudbury was formerly home to four hospitals: Sudbury General, Sudbury Memorial, Sudbury Algoma and Laurentian. In 1968, the first successful coronary artery bypass surgery in Canada was performed at Sudbury Memorial Hospital. Under its hospital restructuring agenda, the government of Ontario amalgamated all of the hospitals into one, the Sudbury Regional Hospital.

Sudbury was one of the first Canadian cities to plan and implement its own digital telecommunications strategy. Beginning in 1996, the city began constructing a fibre optic network which saw over 400 kilometres of cable laid down to serve the city's business and citizen populations. In November of 2005, the city was named one of the world's "Smart 21 Communities" by the Intelligent Community Forum, a worldwide project to honour technological innovation. Other named cities included Waterloo, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Dubai, Seoul, London, Manchester and Melbourne. [1]

Sudbury also has a fairly moderate but active LGBT community. This community is partially fuelled by local residents, out of town students attending the city's three postsecondary institutions, as well as residents of surrounding Northern Ontario cities. Zig's, the city's prominent gay business, is the only gay bar in all of Northern Ontario. The city also has a Pride parade, which takes place in August of each year, and was held for the first time in 1997.

Sports

The Sudbury Wolves of the Ontario Hockey League play in the city, at the Sudbury Arena. The city is also home to a harness racing track, Sudbury Downs. That facility, although not a full casino, also has slot machines.

Laurentian University is represented in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport league by the Laurentian Voyageurs and the Laurentian Lady Vees. Cambrian College is represented in the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association by the Cambrian Golden Shield, and Collège Boréal is represented by the Boréal Vipères. High school students compete in the Sudbury District Secondary School Athletic Association (SDSSAA), which is a division of Northern Ontario Secondary School Athletics (NOSSA).

The city hosted the IAAF World Junior Championships in Athletics in 1988. Sudbury also played host to the Brier, Canada's annual men's curling championships, in 1953 and 1983, and to the 2001 Scott Tournament of Hearts, the women's curling championship.

The Sudbury Spartans football club have been tearing up the gridiron for over half a century with the team's inaugural season in 1954. However, back then they were known as the Hardrocks, the name honouring the city's miners. The team changed the name in 1967 to the Spartans due to then coach Sid Forester believing that Hardrocks sounded too much like the name of a street gang.

Famous Sudburians

This list includes people from all communities within the current city boundaries.

Media

Television

Radio

Newspapers

Sudbury's daily newspaper is the Sudbury Star. A community newspaper, which publishes twice a week, is Northern Life. A francophone community paper, Le Voyageur, is also published weekly. A light, entertaining community newspaper called South Side Story has become quite popular as well. Local communities within the city are also served by smaller weekly papers such as The Valley Vision and the Walden Observer. There are also student newspapers at the city's postsecondary institutions: Lambda and L'Orignal déchaîné at Laurentian, Golden Words at Cambrian College and L'Étudiant at Collège Boréal.

Sudbury is also, along with Thunder Bay, one of the major centres of Finnish-Canadian settlement; the Finnish community in Sudbury has its own community weekly newspaper, Vapaa Sana. An important historical Finnish newspaper, Vapaus, was published from 1917 to 1974.

Demographics

Canada 2001 Census
Population: 155,219

  • English: 62.4%
  • French: 28.2 %
  • Bilingual and allophone: 7.4%

Population change: (1996-2001) -6.1%
Dwellings: 68690
Area: 3354 sq. km.
Density: 46.3 people per sq. km.

Approximately 18.2% of the population is under 14 years of age, whereas those over 65 number 13.8%.

Racial make-up

  • White: 93.4%
  • Aboriginal: 4.6%

Religious make-up

References


Template:Mapit-Canada-cityscale

North: Sudbury, Unorganized, North Part
West: Nairn and Hyman Greater Sudbury
Greater Sudbury completely surrounds Wanapitei 11		 East: Markstay-Warren
South: Whitefish Lake 6, Sudbury, Unorganized, North Part
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