Greater Sudbury

Greater Sudbury
City
City of Greater Sudbury Ville de Grand-Sudbury
Downtown Sudbury
Flag Coat of arms
Nickname:  The Nickel City
Motto(s):  Aedificemus (Latin for "Come, let us build together")
Country	Canada
Province	Ontario
Established	1893 (as Sudbury)
	2001 (as Greater Sudbury)
Government
• Mayor	John Rodriguez
• CAO	Doug Nadorozny
• Governing Body	Greater Sudbury City Council
• MPs	Claude Gravelle (NDP) Glenn Thibeault (NDP)
• MPPs	Rick Bartolucci (OLP) France Gélinas (NDP)
Area
• City	3,200.56 km2 (1,235.74 sq mi)
Elevation	347.5 m (1,140.1 ft)
Population  (2006)
• City	157,857
• Density	49.3/km2 (128/sq mi)
• Urban	106,612
• Metro	158,258
Time zone	UTC-5 (EST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC-4 (EDT)
Postal code span	P3(A-G), P3L, P3N, P3P, P3Y, P0M
Area code	705
Telephone exchanges	207, 222, 280, 396, 397, 479, 507, 521, 522, 523, 524, 525, 546, 547, 550, 551, 552, 553, 554, 556, 560, 561, 562, 564, 566, 585, 596, 618, 626, 662, 664, 665, 669, 670, 671, 673, 674, 675, 677, 682, 688, 690, 691, 692, 693, 694, 695, 698, 699, 805, 853, 855, 858, 866, 867, 897, 898, 899, 919, 920, 929, 966, 967, 969, 983
Website	City of Greater Sudbury
Metropolitan area rank: 24th in Canada Municipal rank: 29th in Canada

Greater Sudbury (2006 census population 157,857) is a city in Northern Ontario, Canada. Greater Sudbury was created in 2001 by amalgamating the cities and towns of the former Regional Municipality of Sudbury, along with several previously unincorporated geographic townships.

It is the largest city in Northern Ontario in population, and the 24^th largest metropolitan area in Canada. In land area, it is the largest city in Ontario, the seventh largest municipality by area in Canada and the largest municipality in English Canada legally designated as a city.

Greater Sudbury is one of only five cities in Ontario — the others are Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton and Kawartha Lakes — that constitute their own independent census divisions, and are not part of any district, county or regional municipality.

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 Wahnapitae, and had a population of 158,258 in the 2006 census. Statistics Canada estimates the Greater Sudbury CMA's population as 165,322 as of 2009. Informally, some residents of the area may also consider the metropolitan area to include the towns of Markstay-Warren, St. Charles and French River, a region commonly known as Sudbury East, as well as the outlying unincorporated communities of Estaire and Cartier.

History

Originally named Sainte-Anne-des-Pins ("St. Anne of the Pines"), the community started as a small lumber camp in McKim township. During construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1883, blasting and excavation revealed high concentrations of nickel-copper ore at Murray Mine on the edge of the Sudbury Basin. Earlier, in 1856, provincial land surveyor Albert Salter had located magnetic abnormalities in the area that were strongly suggestive of mineral deposits, although his discovery aroused little attention because the area was remote. However, the railway construction made mineral prospecting in the area economically feasible for the first time.

Artist's rendering of Sudbury in 1888.

The community was renamed for Sudbury, Suffolk in England, the hometown of CPR commissioner James Worthington's wife. The original settlement at Sudbury was not strongly associated with the mines, but served primarily as a transportation hub and a commercial centre for the separate mining camps and farming communities that surrounded it — miners only began residing in Sudbury itself later on, as improvements to the area's transportation network made it possible for workers to live in one community and work in another. Sudbury was incorporated as a town in 1893, and its first mayor was Stephen Fournier.

Thomas Edison visited the Sudbury area as a prospector in 1901, and is credited with the original discovery of the ore body at Falconbridge.

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, when Sudbury-mined nickel was used extensively in the manufacture of artillery in Sheffield, England. It bottomed out when the war ended, and then rose again in the mid-1920s as peacetime uses for nickel began to develop.

Copper converter in Sudbury, c. 1920.

The town was reincorporated as a city in 1930. The demand for nickel in the 1930s was such that after an early slowdown, the city recovered from the Great Depression much more quickly than almost any other city in North America, and was for much of that decade the fastest-growing city in all of Canada and one of the wealthiest — to the point that most of the city's social problems in the Depression era were caused not by unemployment, but by not having enough housing to accommodate the area's demand for workers. Another brief economic slowdown hit the city in 1937, although the city's fortunes rose again during the Second World War. The Frood Mine alone accounted for 40 per cent of all the nickel used in Allied artillery production during the war. After the end of that war, however, Sudbury was in a good position to supply nickel to the United States government when it decided to stockpile non-Soviet supplies during the Cold War.

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

Robert Carlin, a prominent Mine Mill organizer, was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1943 as the city's first-ever Co-operative Commonwealth Federation representative, although he was later expelled by the party for not sufficiently denouncing the purported — and vastly overstated — prominence of Communists in the union.

In 1956, the Mine Mill held its Canadian convention in Sudbury, which was particularly notable for being the first non-U.S. concert given by Paul Robeson after the United States government instituted its travel ban against him. Also that 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.

In 1973, the city and its suburban communities were reorganized into the Regional Municipality of Sudbury. The former regional municipality was subsequently amalgamated in 2001 into the single-tier city of Greater Sudbury.

In 2006, there was renewed debate on the municipal amalgamation. The former town of Rayside-Balfour, and many of its residents, are unhappy with their position in the city, and lobbied for a deamalgamation referendum during the 2006 municipal election. City council 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. In 2006, then-Mayor David Courtemanche 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. Laughren submitted his final report on January 10, 2007, making 34 recommendations for improvements in the city's municipal ward structure, communications, transportation, recreation and transit services.

Economy

Labour issues have traditionally been Sudbury's dominant economic challenge. On April 21, 1944, the city's mine workers were unionized for the first time with the certification of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Local 598. Inco and Falconbridge each set up their own puppet unions, the United Copper Nickel Workers Union at Inco and the Falconbridge Workers Council at Falconbridge, in an attempt to destabilize the Mine Mill, but the company efforts were largely rejected by workers — the United Copper Nickel Workers, in particular, became better known as "Nickel Rash".

In the 1950s and 60s, Sudbury was beset by extensive labour unrest, experiencing its first strike by mine workers in 1958. Smaller strikes also took place in 1966 and 1969.

The United Steelworkers had also set their sights on raiding the Mine Mill locals, and there was often violence in the streets as the rival factions confronted each other — most notably, a Mine Mill meeting at the Sudbury Arena, discussing whether to join the Steelworkers, erupted into a riot on September 10, 1961. 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. The national Mine Mill organization eventually merged into the Steelworkers in 1967 — most of the Mine Mill locals remaining in Sudbury followed, although Local 598 voted against the merger and remained an independent autonomous local until becoming part of the Canadian Auto Workers in 1993.

In 1978, 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 1979, 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. The city's strategies were not always successful; one particularly famous boondoggle saw substantial municipal funding given to a failed angora goat farm.

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

The city's economic growth has also been hindered at times by taxation issues: because of federal corporate taxation rules pertaining to natural resources companies, Sudbury's ability to directly levy municipal taxes on Inco and Falconbridge is severely curtailed, compared to most cities whose major employers operate in other industries. As early as 1954, the Sudbury Star was referring to Sudbury as "a city without a city's birthright", because of this taxation barrier. Prior to the creation of the Regional Municipality of Sudbury in 1973, the city could not in fact levy any taxes against the mining companies at all, because the Ontario Municipal Board consistently denied the city's requests to annex the outlying company towns, such as Copper Cliff, Coniston, Frood Mine or Falconbridge, where the mining facilities were actually located.

This fact sometimes left the city without a sufficient tax base to adequately maintain or improve municipal services — at one point, in fact, Sudbury offered the fewest municipal services of any city of comparable size in Ontario, despite having residential property tax rates fully 20 per cent higher than any of the same cities. For example, the city did not maintain a public transit system until 1972, instead relying on a succession of private operators — which were eventually consolidated under the ownership of Paul Desmarais — to provide bus services to commuters. The city only took over the system after a public outcry following an incident in which several students en route to classes at Laurentian University were hospitalized for carbon monoxide inhalation when their bus stalled and exhaust leaked into the vehicle.

In the 1950s, the provincial government began providing the city with an annual grant to make up the shortfall, although a municipal accounting study in 1956 found that this grant was only providing 52 per cent of the revenue the city would have received from a direct tax assessment on the mining facilities.

The expansion of the city's boundaries that accompanied the creation of the regional municipality gave the city the power to levy property taxes on Inco's surface operations in Copper Cliff and Frood, but not on their underground facilities. This change improved the city's tax base, but the ongoing discrepancy has still been cited as a factor in municipal politics as recently as the 2006 municipal election. Even today, fully 75 per cent of the city's tax base comes from residential property taxes.

Also in 2006, both of the city's major mining companies, Inco and Falconbridge, were taken over by new owners: Inco was acquired by the Brazilian company CVRD (now renamed Vale), while Falconbridge was purchased by the Swiss company Xstrata. Xstrata donated the historic Edison Building, the onetime head office of Falconbridge, to the city in 2007 to serve as the new home of the municipal archives.

On September 19, 2008, a fire destroyed the historic Sudbury Steelworkers Hall on Frood Road.

Despite its unique challenges, however, the city has seen significant success in diversifying its economy. While mining remains an important industry, Sudbury also derives economic strength as a centre of commerce, government, tourism and science and technology research. Although Vale remains the city's largest single employer, it accounts for less than five per cent of the city's workforce, compared to 25 per cent or more in the 1970s, and the mining industry is no longer the city's largest sector of employment, being outranked by education, health care, public administration, retail trade, hospitality services and mining equipment manufacturing. An ongoing strike at Vale's operations, which began in 2009, has now lasted longer than the devastating 1978 strike — but has had a much more modest effect on the city's economy than the earlier action.

Government

The Inco Superstack dominates the Sudbury skyline.

From its incorporation as a town until 1931, Sudbury consisted of a very small portion of McKim township, extending from Lake Ramsey in the south to the Flour Mill area in the north, and from a point east of today's Gatchell neighbourhood in the west to a point west of modern Minnow Lake in the east. The city annexed very small portions of McKim township at various times between 1931 and 1960, and in 1960 the city annexed the entirety of McKim township with the exception of Copper Cliff, and the western half of Neelon Township.

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:

• City of Sudbury (92,059)
• Town (city after 1997) of Valley East (23,537)
• Town of Rayside-Balfour (16,050)
• Town of Nickel Centre (13,017)
• Town of Walden (10,292)
• Town of Onaping Falls (5,277)
• Town of Capreol (3,817)

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 city also implemented a new 3-1-1 service in 2007.

The five towns and two cities of the region were amalgamated by provincial order on January 1, 2001 to become the city of Greater Sudbury. The previously unincorporated townships of Dill, Cleland, Fraleck, Parkin, Aylmer, Mackelcan, Rathbun and Scadding were also annexed into the new city.

The city is headed by a council and mayor. The current mayor of Greater Sudbury is John Rodriguez, who defeated David Courtemanche in the 2006 municipal election. The main municipal office is at Tom Davies Square, named for a former chair of the Regional Municipality of Sudbury. Citizen service offices, which provide an access point for public services such as license applications, are also located in some of the suburban communities, often in the libraries or former town halls of the pre-amalgamation municipalities.

The city is represented federally by Members of Parliament Glenn Thibeault in the Sudbury riding, and Claude Gravelle in Nickel Belt. Their counterparts in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario are Rick Bartolucci in Sudbury and France Gélinas in Nickel Belt.

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

The municipally owned energy provider Greater Sudbury Utilities serves the city's urban core, while rural areas in the city continue to be served by Hydro One. An ongoing and controversial proposal that Greater Sudbury Hydro take over responsibility for all electrical power distribution in the entire city has been a significant political issue in the 2000s.

Communities

The name Greater Sudbury is almost exclusively a political designation. In common usage, the city is still generally referred to as Sudbury. The usage Greater City of Sudbury (rather than City of Greater Sudbury) is also heard on occasion, but is incorrect.

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. Some of the outlying communities, for example, still retain their own distinct postal and telephone exchange codes, and for several years after the amalgamation residents in many rural parts of the city still could not call other rural parts of the city without incurring long distance charges — Bell Canada did not expand local calling area service in the city until December 2007.

In local usage, however, the name Sudbury is more ambiguous — depending on the speaker, it may refer either to the city as a whole or exclusively to the urban core of old Sudbury. However, the names of the former suburban municipalities are still sometimes used to refer to the communities within their boundaries. Several of the city's community action networks, volunteer committees which are responsible for organizing and managing the city's recreational and cultural services in a specific community, retain the names and service boundaries of their pre-2001 municipalities — only the old city and the former town of Nickel Centre are divided into multiple CANs.

For more information on communities within the city, see the articles Urban neighbourhoods of Sudbury, Capreol, Nickel Centre, Onaping Falls, Rayside-Balfour, Valley East, Walden and Wanup.

Geography

Topography

Sudbury is on the Canadian (Precambrian) Shield. With 330 lakes within its boundaries, Sudbury has more lakes than any other municipality in Canada. Among the most notable are Lake Wanapitei, the largest lake in the world completely contained within the boundaries of a single city, and Lake Ramsey, just a few kilometres south of downtown Sudbury, which held the same record before the municipal amalgamation in 2001 brought Lake Wanapitei fully inside the city limits.

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's pentlandite, pyrite and pyrrhotite ores contain profitable amounts of many elements—primarily nickel and copper, but also including smaller amounts of cobalt, platinum, gold, silver, selenium and tellurium. It also contains an unusually high concentration of sulfur. Local smelting of the ore releases this sulfur into the atmosphere where it combines with water vapour to form sulfuric acid, contributing to acid rain.

Onaping Falls as seen from the A.Y. Jackson Lookout.

As a result, Sudbury was widely (although not entirely accurately) known for many years as a wasteland. In parts of the city, vegetation was devastated both by acid rain and by logging to provide fuel for early smelting techniques. To a lesser extent, the area's ecology was also impacted by lumber camps in the area providing wood for the reconstruction of Chicago after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 — while other logging areas in Northeastern Ontario were also involved in that effort, the emergence of mining in the following decade made it significantly harder for new trees to grow to full maturity in the Sudbury area than elsewhere. The resulting 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, however. Paper birch and wild blueberry patches are notable examples of plants which thrived in the acidic soils — and even during the worst years of the city's environmental damage, not all parts of the city were equally affected.

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 purportedly resembled the lifeless surface of the moon dogged the city for years — as recently as 2009, a CBC Radio journalist repeated the moonscape myth in a report aired on The Current, although the show subsequently corrected the error by interviewing NASA astronaut Fred Haise, who confirmed that he had been in Sudbury to study rock formations.

The construction of the Inco Superstack in 1972 dispersed the sulfuric acid over a much wider area, reducing the acidity of local precipitation and enabling the city to begin an environmental recovery program. 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. As of 2006, 8.7 million new trees were planted in the city. More recently, the city has begun to rehabilitate the slag heaps that surround the Copper Cliff smelter area, with the planting of grass and trees.

View of Lake Ramsey from Science North.

The ecology of the Sudbury region has recovered dramatically, due both to the regreening program and improved mining practices. In 1992, Sudbury was one of twelve world cities given the Local Government Honours Award at the United Nations Earth Summit to honour the city's community-based environmental reclamation strategies. In 2007, Peter Mansbridge anchored an edition of the national news program The National from Sudbury, during a weeklong series profiling Canadian municipalities which had successfully implemented local environmental programs.

Stephen Monet, the manager of the city's environmental efforts, noted in early 2010 that the program had successfully rehabilitated 3,350 hectares of land in the city — however, he cautioned that the effort would need to continue or even be significantly expanded, as approximately 30,000 hectares of land have yet to be regreened.

The city's Nickel District Conservation Authority operates a large conservation area, the Lake Laurentian Conservation Area, in the city's south end. Other unique environmental projects in the city include the Fielding Bird Sanctuary, a protected area along Highway 17 near Lively which provides a managed natural habitat for birds, and a hiking and nature trail near Coniston which is named in honour of scientist Jane Goodall.

Seismic activity

Mining-related seismological activity is not uncommon in the region, although it rarely causes any significant damage — in the most notable such incident, the then-outlying community of Worthington was destroyed on October 4, 1927 when a rock shift caused part of the community to collapse into a mine shaft. No lives were lost in that incident, however, as a mine foreman had noticed the warning signs and successfully evacuated the community the previous evening. Similarly, on June 20, 1984, four miners at Falconbridge were killed in a rock burst which registered 3.4 on the Richter scale.

On November 29, 2006, the city was hit by a minor earthquake, which registered 4.1 on the Richter scale and had its epicentre approximately five kilometres west of Lively. It is believed that the movement began on the 7200 level of Creighton Mine, as ground stress worked its way through upper and lower levels along what is called the Creighton fault. No major damage was reported, although there were reports of the quake being felt as far away as Toronto. Seismologists confirmed in early December that the quake was most likely related to mining activity in the region.

Similarly, a tremor on September 11, 2008 which registered 3.0 on the Richter scale followed a planned blast at the city's North Mine.

Small earthquakes were also reported on March 13 and September 20, 2005.

Climate

Climate data for Sudbury
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Source: Environment Canada

The December of 2006 was notable for a lack of lasting snow cover from mid-December to mid-January, 2007. In 2006, Sudbury experienced a rare "Green Christmas."

Demographics

Reported ethnic origin, 2001

Ethnic origin	Responses	Percent
Canadian	74,945	48.8%
French	59,580	38.8%
English	30,295	19.7%
Irish	24,910	16.2%
Scottish	21,300	13.9%
Italian	12,025	7.8%
German	10,180	6.6%
Ukrainian	7,140	4.7%
Finnish	6,865	4.5%
North American Indian	5,975	3.9%
Multiple responses included; total responses 153,510.

Prior to the 2001 amalgamation, the Regional Municipality of Sudbury was the largest Census Metropolitan Area in Northern Ontario. By itself, however, the city of Sudbury was the second largest city in the region, behind Thunder Bay. Since the amalgamation, however, Greater Sudbury is both the region's largest city and its largest CMA.

The population of Sudbury has declined slightly in recent years, due mostly to many young Sudburians moving to other parts of Canada, especially the southern cities of Ontario. In 2001, the total population of Greater Sudbury was 155,219, a drop of 6.1 percent from the regional municipality's 1996 population of 165,336. Approximately 18.3 percent of the population is under 14 years of age, while those over 65 number 13.8 percent. The average is 38.9 years of age.

In the 2006 census, the city's population increased to 157,857, a growth of 1.7 per cent over 2001. Of that population, 106,612 lived in the city's urban core, while the remaining 51,245 lived in more rural communities within the city limits.

Sudbury is largely a bilingual city. Sudbury has a large francophone population, mostly due to the significant number of inhabitants of French origin. Some 62.3% of the population speak English as their first language, followed by French at 28.2%.

The majority of residents in Sudbury are Christian. Almost 90 percent of the population claims various Christian denominations, the vast majority being Roman Catholic: 64.6%, Protestant: 23.1%, and other Christian groups numbering 1.6%. Other religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism constitute less than one per cent. According to the 2006 Census, Greater Sudbury is 91.8% White, 6.1% Aboriginal, and 2.1% Visible Minorities.

Because it is wholly surrounded by the city and thus exclaved from the Sudbury District, the Wahnapitae First Nation reserve is also counted as part of Greater Sudbury's census division, which had a separate population figure of 157,909 in the 2006 census — however, this figure represents 157,857 residents of the city and 52 residents of the reserve, and should not be conflated with the population of the city. The Whitefish Lake First Nation reserve is contiguous with the Sudbury District, however, and thus is not counted as part of the city's census division, but is part of the city's Census Metropolitan Area population of 158,258.

Transportation

Downtown Sudbury seen from the foot of the Bridge of Nations.

Highway 17 is the main branch of the Trans-Canada Highway, connecting the city to points east and west. An approximately 21-kilometre (15 mile) segment of Highway 17, from Mikkola to Whitefish, is freeway. The provincial Ministry of Transportation has announced tentative plans to extend the Highway 17 freeway east to Coniston along the Southwest and Southeast Bypasses 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 to McKerrow, 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 former alignment of Highway 17 through the city is now Municipal Road 55.

Highway 69, also a branch of the Trans-Canada Highway, leads south to Parry Sound, where it connects to the Highway 400 freeway to Toronto. Highway 400 is currently being extended to Greater Sudbury; although the timetable may be subject to change, this construction is scheduled for completion in 2017. As of 2010, the 20-kilometre segment of Highway 69 from Richard Lake in the city's south end to Trout Lake Road in Estaire follows a new freeway alignment; construction on the next segment, from Estaire to Highway 637, began in 2008 for a scheduled completion in 2012. Highway 69 formerly continued northward to Capreol — this northerly route has also been decommissioned by the province, although portions of it are still referred to locally as "Highway 69 North".

Highway 144 leads north to Highway 101 just west of downtown Timmins.

Greater Sudbury is the only census division in Northern Ontario that maintains a system of numbered municipal roads, similar to the county road system in the southern part of the province.

The Greater Sudbury Airport is served by regional carrier lines such as Bearskin and Air Canada Jazz. Sunwing Vacations also offers direct flights to Orlando, Puerto Plata and Varadero. The airport is also undergoing talks with Northwest Airlines to provide service from the city to one or more U.S. destinations directly. Porter Airlines now offers service between Greater Sudbury and Toronto City Airport.

Sudbury is also served by (Via Rail, with The Canadian between Toronto and Vancouver and the Lake Superior between Sudbury and a string of smaller area communities to White River), and inter-city bus service (Greyhound Canada and Ontario Northland Motor Coach Services). The city also maintains a public transit system, Greater Sudbury Transit.

In the Canadian Automobile Association's annual Ontario's Worst Roads survey for 2007, four roads in Sudbury were ranked in the top 20, including Lansing Avenue, Notre Dame Avenue, Bancroft Drive and Vermilion Lake Road, which was ranked as the worst road in the province. Sudbury appeared on the list more times than any other city.

Education

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 was the first medical school to open in Canada in 30 years, opening its doors in September 2005. Laurentian is also undergoing the planning process of opening the Northern Ontario School of Architecture, hopefully to be opened in 2010. This school would most likely be located on a separate campus in downtown Sudbury. Laurentian is also tentatively planning to open a law school at some point in the future.

English-language public schooling is provided by the Rainbow District School Board. The board operates 30 elementary and seven secondary schools throughout the city, plus one school for students with special needs and the Cecil Facer Youth Centre for young offenders. The Sudbury Catholic District School Board offers publicly funded English-language Catholic schools, with 20 elementary schools, four high schools and an adult education centre. French-language public schools are administered by the Conseil scolaire de district du Grand Nord de l'Ontario with nine elementary and three secondary schools. Finally, the French-language catholic board is the Conseil scolaire de district catholique du Nouvel-Ontario, with 18 elementary and four secondary schools.

There are also two Protestant private schools in the city (Glad Tidings Academy and King Christian Academy), as well as a Montessori school.

Culture

Franco-Ontarians

Approximately 30 percent of the city's population is Franco-Ontarian, particularly in the former municipalities of Valley East and Rayside-Balfour. The city has the largest proportion of francophones to the general population of any major city in Ontario. Sudbury also has the second largest francophone community of any city in English Canada, ranking behind only Ottawa.

As a result, 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, after being created by a group of teachers at the university. As of 2006, it is now permanently flown at Tom Davies Square.

The issue of flying the Franco-Ontarian flag in Sudbury has provoked considerable controversy among local politicians. In 2003, the city government voted against flying the flag at Tom Davies Square for Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. Those who opposed the raising of the Franco-Ontarian flag on public property claimed that it would be inappropriate for the city government to display a symbol representative of only a portion of the city's population. Under the new mayorship of John Rodriguez, the Franco-Ontarian flag was officially raised at Tom Davies Square on December 1, 2006.

Visitor attractions

File:Science north.JPG

Science North main building.

Big Nickel

Sudbury has lent its mining heritage to two major tourist attractions: Science North, 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. A mining heritage monument also overlooks the city's Bell Park.

Another city landmark, the Inco Superstack, is the tallest freestanding chimney in the Western hemisphere, and the second tallest structure in Canada after the CN Tower.

The city is also home to the Greater Sudbury Heritage Museums, a network of historical community museums.

In 2007, the city undertook a community project which saw the downtown Paris Street bridge retrofitted with 72 flagpoles, each of which will permanently display the flag of a world nation demographically represented among the population of Sudbury. In September 2007, the bridge was officially renamed Bridge of Nations. Ten more flagpoles were installed in 2009, bringing the project to its final total of 82 flags.

Science and technology

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 fiber-optic network which saw over 400 kilometres of cable laid down to serve the city's business and citizen populations. This has allowed the general public to enjoy broadband internet at higher speeds than many other cities. Traditionally, the highest speed on broadband available to the public is 6Mbit/s. Residents within the urban core can get resident broadband access at 16Mbit/s. In November 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.

The Creighton Mine site in Sudbury is the site of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, the lowest background radiation particle detector in the world.

Sudbury hosted the International Physics Olympiad in 1997.

As of 2008, a cluster of over 400 mining supply and service companies is located in an economic corridor anchored between Sudbury and North Bay. The city is also home to a number of public and private firms pursuing research and development in new mining technologies, including the Mining Innovation Rehabilitation and Applied Research Corporation (MIRARCO), the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology (NORCAT), and the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI). One notable field of research being pursued in the Sudbury area is the use of robotics and laser technologies to permit the mining of remote and inaccessible areas, including the ocean floor.

Retail

With retail businesses in the city increasingly locating outside of the downtown core, particularly in the Four Corners, Kingsway and Lasalle Boulevard areas, the city has struggled in recent years to maintain a vibrant downtown. Recent projects have included the creation of Market Square, a farmer's and craft market, the redevelopment of the Rainbow Centre mall, streetscape beautification projects, and the creation of the Downtown Village Development Corporation, a committee of business and government representatives responsible for creating and maintaining neighbourhood improvement initiatives in the downtown core. At various times, city councilors and community groups have proposed that the city purchase the CPR stockyards west of Elgin Street to expand the downtown area. The Downtown Village Development Corporation was actively looking at this possibility in 2008.

Sudbury is one of the few cities remaining in Ontario where retail stores are still not legally permitted to open on Boxing Day, December 26. Instead, stores in Sudbury begin their post-Christmas Boxing Day sales on December 27. In recent years, some major chain retailers in the city have occasionally chosen to disregard the municipal bylaw, opening on December 26 and voluntarily accepting the risk of a fine.

Arts and theatre

The city is home to two art galleries, the Art Gallery of Sudbury and La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario. Both are dedicated primarily to Canadian art, especially but not exclusively artists from Northern Ontario.

The city has two professional theatre companies, the anglophone Sudbury Theatre Centre and the francophone Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario. The STC has its own theatre venue downtown, while the TNO stages its productions at La salle André Paiement, a venue located on the campus of Collège Boréal. Theatre productions are also staged by students at Laurentian University's affiliated Thornloe faculty, by a community theatre company at Cambrian College, as well as by high school drama students at Sudbury Secondary School, Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School and École secondaire MacDonald-Cartier.

An annual film festival, Cinéfest, is also held in the city each September. The animated CBC Television series Chilly Beach is produced at March Entertainment's Sudbury studio.

The city is investigating the possibility of an 1,800-seat performing arts centre, in addition to an arts and entertainment district in the downtown core.

Music

In 2006 and 2007, community discussion has centred on the creation of a performing arts centre. Sudbury has some trouble attracting concert tours in recent years, in part because, since the demise of the Grand Theatre in the 1990s, the city lacks a suitable mid-size concert venue for bands that have outgrown the bar circuit but are not yet able to fill venues such as the Sudbury Community Arena. However, despite this, the city has managed to book many high-profile performing acts in 2008, including Michael Bublé, Elton John, 50 Cent, Avril Lavigne, the Backstreet Boys, Girlicious, Akon, Kenny Rogers and Bob Dylan. Bell Park's outdoor Grace Hartman Amphitheatre and Laurentian University's Fraser Auditorium are sometimes used for summer bookings, although neither is available year-round. Additionally, the relatively small size of the Northern Ontario market means that major touring artists will appear, if they play any venues in the region at all, at either the Sudbury Community Arena or Sault Ste. Marie's Essar Centre, but not both.

Smaller touring indie rock bands, as well as some local musicians, are usually booked at The Townehouse Tavern, while local bands play a number of small music venues across the city.

The city is also home to annual music festivals, including Sudbury Summerfest, the Northern Lights Festival Boréal and La Nuit sur l'étang. The local Sudbury Symphony Orchestra performs six annual concerts of classical music, staged at the city's Glad Tidings Tabernacle.

Although local bands in the Sudbury area play music in a variety of genres, from rock to punk to country to heavy metal to folk to hip hop, the city's most nationally and internationally successful artists, such as Robert Paquette, Kate Maki, Nathan Lawr, Gil Grand, Kevin Closs, CANO, Jake Mathews, Loma Lyns, Alex J. Robinson and Chuck Labelle, have predominantly been in the country, folk and country-rock genres. Another notable Canadian country rock band, Ox, was launched in Vancouver by two musicians from Sudbury, Ryan Bishops and Mark Browning, although the band has more recently moved back to Sudbury. The rap metal bands Project Wyze and Konflit dramatiK have also had some success.

Rock guitarist Pat Travers, originally from Toronto, also lived in Sudbury for a number of years during his early career.

LGBT community

The city first held its Sudbury Pride parade in 1997. The annual event takes place in August. Zig's, the city's prominent gay business, is the only gay bar in all of Northern Ontario.

Sudbury in art and literature

Notable works of fiction set primarily or partially in Sudbury or its former suburbs include Bruce McDonald's film Roadkill, Paul Quarrington's novel Logan in Overtime, Robert J. Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, Alistair MacLeod's novel No Great Mischief, and Jean-Marc Dalpé's play 1932, la ville du nickel and his short story collection Contes sudburois. The city is also fictionalized as "Chinookville" in several books by American comedy writer Jack Douglas.

One of Stompin' Tom Connors' most famous songs, "Sudbury Saturday Night", is inspired by the city and its hard rock mining image. Quebec musician Mononc' Serge also wrote a song about the city, titled "Sudbury", on his 2001 album Mon voyage au Canada.

Artist A. Y. Jackson's 1953 painting "Spring on the Onaping River" depicts a waterfall on the Onaping River between Dowling and Onaping. A scenic lookout on Highway 144 enables a view of the waterfall. The painting itself hung at Sudbury Secondary School from 1955 to 1974, when it was stolen from the school grounds shortly after Jackson's death and has never subsequently been recovered.

In 2007, Ontario's French language public broadcaster, TFO, announced that it would produce a new comedy series, Météo+. The series, which premiered in 2008, is both produced and set in Sudbury, and is co-written by an alumnus of École Secondaire Macdonald-Cartier, Robert Marinier. Météo+ ran for three seasons, for a total of 20 episodes. They have all been released on DVD.

In the spring of 2010, Les Productions R. Charbonneau (the company responsible for bringing Météo+ to Sudbury) announced it would be producing three seasons of a new show, "Ramville", about hockey fans in the fictional small town of Ramville. The show is written by the same team as Météo+ and will be using much of the same crew.

Media

Main article: Media in Greater Sudbury

As the largest city in Northeastern Ontario, Greater Sudbury is the region's primary media centre. Due to the relatively small size of the region's individual media markets, most of the region is served at least partially by Sudbury-based media — CICI-TV produces almost all local programming on the CTV Northern Ontario system, and the CBC Radio stations CBCS-FM and CBON-FM broadcast to the entire region through extensive rebroadcaster networks. As well, most of the commercial radio stations in Northeastern Ontario's smaller cities simulcast programming produced in Sudbury for at least a portion of their programming schedules, particularly in weekend and evening slots.

Health care

Greater Sudbury serves as the health care centre for much of northeastern Ontario through the Sudbury Regional Hospital. The hospital has three sites: St. Joseph's Health Centre (the old Sudbury General Hospital), Sudbury Memorial, and Laurentian. Formerly three separate hospitals, the government of Ontario amalgamated the hospitals in the late 1990s under its health care restructuring agenda. The one-site care facility is still under construction at the site of Laurentian Hospital. Laurentian is also the site of the Regional Cancer Program, which treats cancer patients from across the north. In 1968, the first successful coronary artery bypass surgery in Canada was performed at Sudbury Memorial Hospital.

Adult mental health services are also provided to the area through the Sudbury Regional Hospital, primarily at the Kirkwood site (formerly the Sudbury Algoma Hospital) and at the Cedar site downtown. Children's mental health services are provided through the Regional Children's Psychiatric Centre operated by the Northeast Mental Health Centre, located onsite at the Kirkwood Site of the Sudbury Regional Hospital.

Emergency services

Greater Sudbury is served by the Greater Sudbury Police Service, headquartered in downtown Sudbury. There is also a detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police located in the McFarlane Lake area of the city's south end.

Greater Sudbury Emergency Medical Services provide prehospital paramedic services. Two levels of paramedics work in Greater Sudbury, primary care and advanced care paramedics. There are over 150 full-time and part-time paramedics. EMS operates from 10 bases throughout the Sudbury area, as well as a central headquarters in Azilda.

Greater Sudbury Fire Services operates from 25 fire stations located throughout the city, with a combination of full-time and paid part-time firefighters. Prior to the municipal amalgamation of 2001, most of the suburban towns were served by separate volunteer fire departments, which were amalgamated into the citywide service as part of the municipal restructuring. Police and EMS services, however, were provided by a single region-wide system prior to amalgamation.

Sports

The Sudbury Wolves of the Ontario Hockey League play in the city, at the Sudbury Community Arena. The city is also home to a harness racing track, located in Azilda, called 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 played in the Northern Football Conference since 1954. The team was originally known as the Hardrocks in honour of the city's mining industry. However, then coach Sid Forster believed that the name "Hardrocks" sounded too much like a street gang and the name was changed to the Spartans in 1967.

The city is also investigating the possibility of building a new sports centre, set to include four NHL-sized ice pads (one of which will be a signature rink with a seating capacity of 1200 and an indoor running track), indoor pool, multi-use space, tennis dome, gymnastics centre, a restaurant, two multi-use grass fields, two artificial turf fields, multi-use outdoor trails, skate park, basketball court and playground.

The Trans Canada Trail passes through the city, and the Voyageur Hiking Trail aims to extend its trail eastward to meet area hiking trails.

Notable people

Main article: List of people from Greater Sudbury

Sister cities

• Gomel, Belarus
• Kokkola/Karleby, Finland

External links

• City of Greater Sudbury
• Greater Sudbury Development Corporation
• Riches Beyond our Rocks: Stories from Greater Sudbury