What Growing Up in Sulphur City Taught Me About Beauty
I was born in a crater.
My Northern Ontario birthplace was formed 1,849 billion years ago when a 10-kilometre-wide meteorite—actually, now they’re saying it was a comet—travelling at 8 times the speed of sound crashed to the earth. The massive impact formed what is now known as the Sudbury Basin, the earth’s second-largest crater at 62 km long and 30 km wide.
That sucker punch from outer space filled the earth’s sunken face with molten rock containing nickel, copper, platinum, palladium, gold, and other metals. It took centuries for the pulverized rock to cool, and until the late 1800s for settlers in the Sudbury Basin to figure out they were sitting on, literally, a gold mine.
Sudbury, home of the mighty Big Nickel.
By the time I was born in 1974, the city’s mines—Inco and Falconbridge—were two of the world’s leading producers of nickel. I grew up playing under giant plumes of sulphurous smoke belched by Inco’s massive smokestack at the refinery. My friends and I scrambled over the lunar landscape of rocks turned black by the copper smelting process. Some nights, Mom would drive my sister and me to see the slag being dumped by the mines. We’d sip milkshakes and watch the hot, lava-like substance spill down the side of a hill, mesmerized by its beauty.
That’s right. I said beauty.
For that’s what Sudbury was to us, then: the magical, pockmarked backdrop upon which our imaginations could roam freely. With a little creativity, rocky outcrops became British boarding schools. Grassy backyards became stages for elaborate dance recitals. Graveyards became sites of espionage and intrigue as my sister and I hid behind tombstones, pretending our pointed fingers were guns.
OK, we were strange children.
But as Ray Bradbury puts it, “Trains and boxcars and the smell of coal and fire are not ugly to children. Ugliness is a concept that we happen on later and become self-conscious about.” (That’s from the introduction to Dandelion Wine).
Indeed, I did grow self-conscious about Sudbury in my teens, especially after I moved away. “I’m from Sudbury,” I’d say apologetically to other Canadians, who’d laugh and say, “Ah, yes, the armpit of Ontario” (it turns out other cities like Hamilton share this dubious moniker as well). But now, after a visit back home this summer, I realize Sudbury is actually the heart of Ontario. For me, anyway.
The city’s greening efforts—they’re now growing trees in the mines!—have, over the decades, transformed Sudbury into quite a leafy, picturesque city in many places. Art is springing up all over town, too, thanks to Up Here, an emerging art and music festival. There are hundreds of freshwater lakes scattered throughout the area. And, of course, Sudbury is home to friends and family members—including my father, my wonderful step-family, and my indefatigable grandmother, still going strong at 100.
Mural in downtown Sudbury by artist Danielle Daniel.
However, the giant smokestack, now owned by a Brazilian company called Vale, still remains. The weather-beaten roads are potholed and plastered together with asphalt and tar. There are defunct breweries, shambling shacks, and, yes, graffiti-covered boxcars. At its core, Sudbury remains Sudbury—a hardscrabble frontier town built in a crater that was created when the cosmos decided to give the earth a walloping clout on the chin. Sudbury is gritty, tough, and has gold at its core—both the chemical element and the people. And that’s a beautiful thing.
As a child, my imagination sprouted in the somewhat barren Sudbury of the 1970s and ’80s—just like the seedlings that now grow in Vale’s greenhouse, 4,800 feet below the earth. It has taken me several decades to really start mining my creativity and publishing essays and poems, but if I keep going, perhaps I’ll hit gold one day.
Or perhaps not. But if my hometown has taught me anything, it’s the power of perseverance. In any case, I’m enjoying digging deep into my past and present for material. Sometimes, I stumble over subject matter that, at first glance, seems quite bleak—chronic illness, death, mortality, and madness, for starters. Fortunately, Sudbury has trained my eye to see the beauty shimmering beneath the soot.
Who wants to spend their days sitting at a desk, poking around such bleak emotional terrain, you might well ask?
I do. The landscape is incredible.
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Thoughts on this post? Scroll down to leave a comment.
September 15, 2017 @ 11:45 am
I stumbled upon your story, and wanted to share that your writing and imagery really resonated with me. You took me back to some memories I haven’t thought about in a long time. I too am a 1970’s child of Sudbury, roaming around the Gatchell area, inhaling sulphur while playing on, and at the base of the Big Nickel hill. Watching the slag dumps at dusk was, and will always remain a special experience for me. I left the North a number of years ago having set up a career and life in Southern Ontario, but I continue to feel a pull or longing that brings me back to Sudbury and the North. Whenever I visit family I find it’s not visually the same. The re-greening efforts occurring in the Sudbury basin are to be applauded, but I miss the black, rust/copper colours of the stark and rugged landscape….they are vivid in my mind to this day.
Thanks for taking me back….
(We always had great hills to go tobogganing on and plenty of good times at the outdoor rinks in the winter!)
PS. My father lives on Vancouver Island, and I have visited there many times. I can see why you set up roots out there….beautiful place to live.
September 19, 2017 @ 11:55 pm
Troy, ah yes! The tobogganing hills! When we were kids we called it “sliding” for some strange reason. 😉 My sister and I used to zip down the hills by Princess Anne Public School for hours on snowy days. And we both learned to swim in the Gatchell Pool. We still walk on the bicycle loop at Delki Dozzi whenever we go back to visit. Ah, good ol’ Sudbury. I know what you mean about that bleak beauty and, as you so beautifully put it, the “rust/copper colours of the stark and rugged landscape.”
Thanks for walking down memory lane with me. Appreciate you dropping a line! (And yes, Vancouver Island is a wonderful place, too.)
September 3, 2016 @ 10:39 am
Lovely words and description. I believe only someone who grew up as a child in Sudbury – scrambling about the rocks, throwing stones into Junction Creek, swimming n the lakes, and picking those wild blueberries – could appreciate the beauty and wonder of That basin city. Thanks for writing. I loved it.
September 3, 2016 @ 1:21 pm
Thanks for your kind words. Ah yes, Junction Creek! We used to walk there as kids, picking up clumps of moss and rocks to bring home. And I crave those blueberries every summer.
August 31, 2016 @ 1:38 am
Well said! I still remember climbing the stairs to Marymount with the task of sulfur in my lungs. Lol. I have fond memories of watching the stag and blueberry picking on the black rocks. What happens when they get rid of the nickle as currency? Will people still talk about “The Big Nickle”? It’s definitely a place of resilience.
August 31, 2016 @ 11:48 am
Ah yes, that lovely burning feeling in the lungs, that strange taste on the tongue. I know it well! Glad you liked the piece.
August 30, 2016 @ 1:13 am
I love your post Christine. Your dynamic imagery of your childhood and youth in Sudbury are like the chorus of a familiar song to me. Such sweet and lasting memories of the Big Nickle city. Such a joy to explore these faded gems each time I return. Thank you.
August 30, 2016 @ 11:20 am
Hey, glad you liked it, Ken! Ah, Nickel City. Sweet, sulphuric memories indeed.
August 29, 2016 @ 6:50 pm
What a great little story Christine – I lived up in Whitehorse Yukon for a couple years to Toronto and something always brings me back to Sudbury! I hope you’re doing well – Jeff Elofson
August 30, 2016 @ 11:19 am
Jeff, long time no see! Great to hear from you across the years. Glad to see your love for Sudsy is strong as ever.
August 28, 2016 @ 6:05 pm
Incredible imagery. And so true. It’s an amazing landscape, that dark crater. Keep mining.
August 30, 2016 @ 11:22 am
Thanks, Janet! And I shall continue mining for sure. 😉
August 28, 2016 @ 3:38 pm
Thank you so very much. We moved to my father’s hometown of Sudbury in 1970, and I relate so much to all you posted. I could not wait to escape that place, but now it seems I am drawn back. I miss the rocks. I miss picking blueberries. I miss the wind off the many lakes. Those rocks are so beautiful. The scraggly trees were metaphors for us, the scraggly kids growing up into an uncertain future on those rocks. Most of my generation is gone, and in the south or further afield. I don’t know how they feel about this, but there is nothing like watching the hiss of the snow melting as it is hit by slag. There is nothing like taking your date parking under the water tower. I miss it and I need to go back.
I now live in another armpit, Hamilton, and this place is so like home except for the missing rocks.
ThankYou
August 28, 2016 @ 5:21 pm
Wow, I love all those details you just shared! Sounds like you have some excellent stories up your sleeves. Ah, beautiful Ontario. Thanks so much for writing.