I THINK MINING

The boom and bust of the price of nickel is best seen in a chart.  My computer skills do not permit me to shown the fifteen-year price of nickel.  Try the link or use the many features of CommoditiesMine to produce your own graph.  Whichever way you look at it, the price of nickel spiked up in a way that the bubble devotee would enjoy.  Now the bubble is burst and the price is falling to those last seen fifteen years ago. 

Pity David Leadbeater whose collection of essays on Sudbury, Ontario has just been published by Fernwood Publishing.  In a volume entitled Mining Town Crisis: Globalization, Labour and Resistance in Sudbury he brings together critical insight into what makes the town, the region, the people, and the mines of Sudbury.  And it is a singularly depressing story.  But the depressing story was written before the current nickel bubble burst.  How much more depressing the essays would be if written now.

Or maybe.  I see the rental vacancy rate in town is still low:

“Several factors continue to keep the Greater Sudbury vacancy rate low. The strong mining sector continues to be very integral to the low rate,” Warren Philp, Northern Ontario Market Analyst for CMHC, said in a release.

 ”Despite falling prices for nickel, gold and other base metals in the last four months, the run-up in mining and mining-related employment in recent years continues to exert pressure on the Sudbury rental market where no significant new supply is being added,” Philp said.

 “Furthermore, demographics are also supporting rental demand as post-secondary students and empty nesters are often seeking relatively scarce rental units. Empty nesters often have chosen rental in the absence of other low maintenance housing options being available.”

This tiny factoid attests to the complexity of capturing a boom and bust mining town in one or even many essays.   In a superbly written Introduction to the book, Leadbeater tries to capture the whole of Sudbury and its place in the global financial and mining market.  But he cannot, for it all depends on your perspective.  Leadbeater is driven by Marx, his admiration for the unions, and concern for exploitation of workers, women, and the environment.  He stumbles badly when he tries to reconcile the growing power of local First Nations with the white man’s power as centered in the union.  Fact is it cannot be done.  Both would like to drive the other out of town, and no academic will succeed in finding an equitable solution.

He would like to flatten the suburbs and put everybody in a downtown apartment from which they could walk to the opera.  I would like that, but most miners would find it insufferable, regardless of their union affiliation or university degrees.

Leadbeater and his fellow authors would like to end globalization.  No Vale owning mines in Canada.  But I suppose it is OK if Canadians own mines in Cuba.  Or maybe he and his fellow authors would like Sudbury to be run just like the other capitalist Canadians run the Cuban nickel mines.  Bet there would be another strike before that happens. 

It is too easy to make fun of the confusion and conflicting emotions that beset the socialist Canadian when he takes on mining, low rentals, high-paying jobs, women in the work force, and the rights of Aboriginals.  I enjoyed reading Leadbeater’s prose and topic-specific knowledge and insight, but I searched in vain for an overriding theme or solution.  And he was writing when the price of nickel was high.  I cannot wait to hear what he says now that the price is low.  Maybe he will respond: “See it is all the fault of globalization.  If the unions owned the mines, we would still be churning out nickel by hand, living in communally-heated apartments, and walking to the evening’s opera.” 

The sad fact is that the days when the uneducated could earn more is past.  See what is happening to auto workers.  The educated have come to power and messed it up.  See the housing market.  But they are not about to return to the uneducated the right to earn more than the average worker in…….well let us hope it is not Cuba which is still the shining star of socialist perfection according to my liberal lady friend. 

If you are interested in the woes of the displaced, misplaced, uneducated, unskilled, unhealthy, or other minority status, including white male union workers, this is the book for you.  It is well written, well edited, informed, and sad.  Personally I will avoid Sudbury like the plague after this book, unless somebody promises to take me on a helicopter from penthouse to penthouse only to descend to a Belleni opera. 

OK.  I am being nasty.  If there is an opera house in Sudbury let me know and I will come do pennance for these remarks.  Even better if David would join me for the show.  It would be fun to talk to him at dinner before the performance.  I propose a performance of The Sicilian Vespers by Verdi.  It neatly captures the distress of an oppressed indigenous population ruled by foreigners.  They eventually take things into their own hands, kill the foreigners, and take back their land and economy.  A perfect metaphor of Sudbury with the added advantage of great music to emphasize the emotions and action. 

Maybe I have been to gloomy about Sudbury in low nickel-price times.  See the blog, The Republic of Mining, for an up-beat report on Sudbury mining.  I invite them to re-review this book and hopefully negate my pessimism.