Greater Sudbury

Greater Sudbury
—  City  —
City of Greater Sudbury Ville de Grand-Sudbury
From top left: Downtown Sudbury Skyline, Big Nickel, Bridge of Nations, Inco Superstack, Bell Park, and Science North
Flag Coat of arms Logo
Nickname(s): The Nickel City, City of Lakes,[1] Sudz
Motto: Aedificemus (Latin for "Come, let us build together")
Coordinates: 46°29′24″N 81°00′36″W / 46.49°N 81.01°W / 46.49; -81.01Coordinates: 46°29′24″N 81°00′36″W / 46.49°N 81.01°W / 46.49; -81.01
Country	Canada
Province	Ontario
Established	1893 (as Sudbury)
	2001 (as Greater Sudbury)
Government
• Mayor	Marianne Matichuk
• CAO	Doug Nadorozny
• Governing Body	Greater Sudbury City Council
• MPs	Claude Gravelle (NDP) Glenn Thibeault (NDP)
• MPPs	Rick Bartolucci (OLP) France Gélinas (NDP)
Area[2]
• City	3,200.56 km2 (1,235.74 sq mi)
• Metro	3,211.19 km2 (1,239.85 sq mi)
Elevation	347.5 m (1,140.1 ft)
Population (2011)[2]
• City	160,274 (29th)
• Density	49.7/km2 (129/sq mi)
• Metro	160,770 (24th)
• Metro density	49.5/km2 (128/sq mi)
Time zone	EST (UTC-5)
• Summer (DST)	EDT (UTC-4)
Postal code span	P3(A-G), P3L, P3N, P3P, P3Y, P0M
Area code(s)	705/249
Twin cities
• Gomel	Belarus
• Kokkola	Finland
Telephone exchanges	705–207, 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, 983 249-810, 878
Website	www.city.greatersudbury.on.ca
Metropolitan area rank: 24th in Canada Municipal rank: 29th in Canada

Greater Sudbury (2011 census population 160,274)^[2] is a city in Ontario, Canada. Originally named Sainte-Anne-des-Pins, Greater Sudbury was created in 2001 by merging the cities and towns of the former Regional Municipality of Sudbury, along with several previously unincorporated geographic townships. Once a world leader in nickel mining, Sudbury is now the major retail, economic, health and educational centre for Northeastern Ontario. Sudbury is also home to a large Franco-Ontarian population which influences its arts and culture.

It is the largest city in the Northern Ontario region by population, and the 24th largest metropolitan area in Canada. By land area, it is the largest city in Ontario, and the seventh largest municipality by area in Canada. Greater Sudbury is one of only five cities in Ontario that constitutes its own independent census divisions, and is 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, the name "Greater Sudbury" refers to a single city, not a conurbation of independent municipalities. However, Sudbury is still the common name for the city in everyday usage.

History

Originally named Sainte-Anne-des-Pins ("St. Anne of the Pines"), Greater Sudbury was established as a mission by the Jesuits in 1883. The Sainte-Anne-des-Pins church played a prominent role in the development of Franco-Ontarian culture in the region. Until 1917, Sainte-Anne-des-Pins was the only Roman Catholic congregation in Sudbury, offering masses in both English and French.^[3]

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 anomalies in the area that were strongly suggestive of mineral deposits, but his discovery aroused little attention because the area was remote. Railway construction made large-scale mining development 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, which was the hometown of Canadian Pacific Railway commissioner James Worthington's wife.^[4][5] 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.^[6] 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.^[7] After a brief period as a lumber camp, Sudbury’s economy was dominated by the mining industry for much of the 20th century. Rich deposits of nickel sulphide ore were discovered in the Sudbury Basin geological formation. Two major mining companies were created, Inco in 1902 and Falconbridge in 1928. They became two of the city’s major employers and two of the world's leading producers of nickel.

Through the decades that followed, Sudbury's economy went through boom and bust cycles as world demand for nickel fluctuated. Demand was high during the First World War when Sudbury-mined nickel was used extensively in the manufacturing 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 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, because a mine foreman had noticed the warning signs and successfully evacuated the community the previous evening.^[8]

The town was reincorporated as a city in 1930. The city recovered from the Great Depression much more quickly than almost any other city in North America due to increased demand for nickel in the 1930s. Sudbury was the fastest-growing city and one of the wealthiest cities in Canada for most of the decade. Many of the city's social problems in the Great Depression era were not caused by unemployment, but due to the difficulty in keeping up with all of its new infrastructure demands created by rapid growth.^[6] Between 1936 and 1941, the city was ordered into receivership by the Ontario Municipal Board.^[6] In their book Sudbury: Rail Town to Regional Capital, historians C. M. Wallace and Ashley Thomson theorize that William Marr Brodie, the city's former mayor who was appointed to the Ontario Municipal Board in 1934, lobbied for the receivership order to protect the city from excessive debts and expenditures even though several other cities in Ontario that were not placed into receivership were in much worse financial shape.^[6]

Another economic slowdown effected the city in 1937, but the city's fortunes rose again during the Second World War. The Frood Mine alone accounted for 40 percent of all the nickel used in Allied artillery production during the war. After the end of the war, 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.^[6]

In 1978, the workers of Sudbury's largest mining corporation, INCO (now Vale), embarked on a strike over production and employment cutbacks. The strike, which lasted for nine full months, badly damaged Sudbury's economy and spurred the city government to launch a project 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 noted boondoggle saw substantial municipal funding given to a failed angora goat farm.^[6]

Also in 2006, both of the city's major mining companies, Canadian based 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.^[9] On September 19, 2008, a fire destroyed the historic Sudbury Steelworkers Hall on Frood Road.^[10] A strike at Vale's operations, which began on July 13, 2009 and saw a tentative resolution announced on July 5, 2010,^[11] lasted longer than the devastating 1978 strike, but had a much more modest effect on the city's economy than the earlier action—in fact, the local rate of unemployment declined slightly during the strike.^[12]

Geography

Topography

Sudbury is a city of lakes with 330 over 10 hectares in size within city limits.^[13] Among the most notable are Lake Wanapitei, the largest lake in the world completely contained within the boundaries of a single city representing 1/3 of the total lake area, and Lake Ramsey, 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.^[13] Sudbury is divided into two main watersheds: to the east is the French River Watershed which flows into Georgian Bay and to the west is the Spanish River Watershed which flows into Lake Huron.^[13]

Sudbury is also built around many small, rocky mountains with exposed igneous rock of the Canadian (Precambrian) Shield. The ore deposits in Sudbury are part of a large geological structure known as the Sudbury Basin that are 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 sulphur.

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

Local smelting of the ore releases this sulphur into the atmosphere where it combines with water vapour to form sulphuric acid, contributing to acid rain. As a result, Sudbury is widely known as a wasteland.^[14] In parts of the city, vegetation was devastated by acid rain and 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 related processes in the following decade made it significantly harder for new trees to grow to full maturity in the Sudbury area than elsewhere.^[6]

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. Paper birch and wild blueberry patches are examples of plants which thrived in the acidic soils. Not all parts of the city were equally affected even during the worst years of the city's environmental degradation.

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 persists.^[15]

Regreening

The construction of the Inco Superstack in 1972 dispersed sulphuric 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 2010, 9.2 million new trees have been planted in the city.^[16] 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. The United Nations honoured twelve cities in the world, including Sudbury, with the Local Government Honours Award at the 1992 Earth Summit honouring the city's community-based environmental reclamation strategies. In early 2010 that the program had successfully rehabilitated 3,350 hectares of land in the city; however, approximately 30,000 hectares of land have yet to be regreened.^[17]

The city's Nickel District Conservation Authority operates a 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 that provides a managed natural habitat for birds, and a hiking and nature trail near Coniston, which is named in honour of scientist Jane Goodall.^[18]

Climate

Greater Sudbury’s climate is humid continental (Koppen climate classification Dfb). This region has warm and often hot summers with long, cold winters. It is situated north of the great lakes, making it prone to arctic air masses. Monthly precipitation is equal year round with snow cover expected 6 months of the year.^[19] Although extreme weather events are rare, one of the worst tornadoes in Canadian history struck the city and its suburbs on August 20, 1970 killing six people, injuring 200, and causing over C$17 million in damages.^[20]

Demographics

Greater Sudbury is the most populous municipality and census metropolitan area in Northern Ontario. In the 2011 census, the city's population increased to 160,274, a growth of 1.5 per cent over the 2006 population of 157,857. The median age is 41.1 years, slightly higher than the provincial average of 39.0 years.^[23]

In the 2011 census, six distinct "population centres", or urban areas, were listed within the city:

• Sudbury (population 106,840, density 392.9 per km²), comprising the portion of the pre-amalgamation city of Sudbury lying north of Highway 17 and Highway 69, as well as the neighbourhoods of Azilda and Chelmsford in the former town of Rayside-Balfour, and the neighbourhoods of Garson and Falconbridge in the former town of Nickel Centre;^[24]
• Capreol (population 3,276, density 537.7 per km²), comprising the main populated area in the former town of Capreol;^[25]
• Dowling (population 1,690, density 475.0 per km²), comprising the neighbourhood of Dowling in the former town of Onaping Falls;^[26]
• Lively (population 6,922, density 350.9 per km²), comprising the neighbourhoods of Lively, Waters, Mikkola and Naughton in the former town of Walden;^[27]
• Onaping-Levack (population 2,042, density 251.3 per km²), comprising the neighbourhoods of Onaping and Levack in the former town of Onaping Falls;^[28] and
• Valley East (population 20,676, density per 368.9 km²), comprising the neighbourhoods of Val-Caron, Blezard Valley, Val-Thérèse and Hanmer in the former city of Valley East.^[29]

In total, these six population centres have 141,446 residents, or 88 per cent of the city's total population. The remaining 12 per cent of the city's population, 18,828 people, live in more rural areas within the city limits for which distinct population statistics were not published separately from those for the city as a whole.

Sudbury is a bilingual city with a large francophone population. Some 80.1% of the population speak English most often at home, followed by French at 16.3% which is higher than the Ontario average of 2.4%.^[30] According to the 2001 census, the residents of Greater Sudbury are predominantly Christian. Almost 90 percent of the population claims adherence to Christian denominations including: Roman Catholic (64.6%), Protestant (23.1%), and other Christian groups (1.6%). Those with no religious affiliation accounted 9.9% of the population. Other religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism constitute less than one per cent of the population.^[31] According to the 2006 Census, Greater Sudbury is 91.8% White, 6.1% Aboriginal, and 2.1% Visible Minorities. The largest visible minority population is of Black Canadians, who comprise 0.7% of the city's population.^[23]

The census metropolitan area of Greater Sudbury (population 160,770) consists of the city and the adjacent First Nations reserves of Wahnapitei (population 102)^[32] and Whitefish Lake (population 394).^[33] As the Wahnapitei First Nation is an enclave within the city boundaries, it is also counted as part of Greater Sudbury's census division population of 160,376; this figure excludes Whitefish Lake, which is part of the separate Sudbury District.

Economy

Nickel Rim South Mine

After a brief period as a lumber camp, Sudbury’s economy was dominated by the mining industry for much of the 20th century. By the 1970s, Inco employed a quarter of the local workforce.^[35] However, in 2006, Inco and Falconbridge were taken over by foreign multinational corporations: Inco was acquired by the Brazilian company Vale, and Falconbridge was purchased by the Swiss company Xstrata. Vale now employs less than 5 per cent of the workforce.^[35] By 2006, 80% of Greater Sudbury's labour force was employed in services with 20% remaining in manufacturing.^[36] Over 345 mining supply and service companies are located in Sudbury.^[37] This includes a number of public and private firms pursuing research and development in new mining technologies such as Mining Innovation Rehabilitation and Applied Research Corporation (MIRARCO), the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology (NORCAT), and the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI).

While mining has decreased in relative importance, Sudbury’s economy has diversified to establish itself as a major centre of finance, business, tourism, health care, education, government, and science and technology research.^[38] Many of these reflect Sudbury’s position as a regional service centre for Northeastern Ontario.^[36]

The top employers in Sudbury as of November 2010 include:^[39]

Retail businesses in the city has moved outside of the downtown core in the late 20th century and the city has struggles to maintain a vibrant downtown. Projects aimed at revitalizing the downtown core 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 not-for-profit organization dedicated to business attraction and downtown residential development. Despite these efforts retail is concentrated outside of the downtown core at the New Sudbury Centre, the largest shopping mall in Northern Ontario with 110 stores.^[40]

Sudbury's economy is also influenced by science and technology sectors. The Creighton Mine site in Sudbury is home to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. Although the original experiments have now concluded, the underground laboratory has been enlarged and continues to operate other experiments at SNOLAB. SNOLAB will be the world's deepest underground lab facility; the deeper Kolar Gold Fields experiments ended with the closing of the mine in 1992,^[41] and the planned DUSEL laboratory is not expected to begin construction before 2012.^[42] The SNO equipment has been refurbished for use in the SNO+ experiment.

Arts and culture

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 artists from Northern Ontario. The city's two professional theatre companies are the anglophone Sudbury Theatre Centre (STC) and the francophone Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario (TNO). 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, St. Charles College and École secondaire Macdonald-Cartier with its troupe Les Draveurs. An annual film festival, Cinéfest, is also held in the city each September.

Sudbury's culture is influenced by the large Franco-Ontarian community consisting of approximately 40 percent of the city's population,^[34] particularly in the amalgamated municipalities of Valley East and Rayside-Balfour and historically in the Moulin-à-Fleur neighbourhood. The French culture is celebrated with the Franco-Ontarian flag,recognized by the province as an official emblem, which was created in 1975 by a group of teachers at Laurentian University and after some controversy has flown at Tom Davies Square since 2006. The large francophone community plays a central role in developing and maintaining many of the cultural institutions of Sudbury including the Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario, La Nuit sur l'étang, La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario, Le Centre franco-ontarien de folklore, the Prise de parole publishing company, and hosted Les Jeux de la francophonie canadienne in 2011. The city has an active LGBT community which hosts an annual Sudbury Pride march every summer since 1997. Zig's, the city's prominent gay business, is the only gay bar in all of Northern Ontario.^[43]

Notable works of art themed or set primarily or partially in Sudbury or its former suburbs include 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", depicts the hard-drinking, hard-partying social life of hard rock miners of Sudbury.

Music

Sudbury’s most successful artists have predominantly been in the country, folk and country-rock genres. These include Robert Paquette, Kate Maki, Nathan Lawr, Gil Grand, Kevin Closs, CANO, Jake Mathews, Loma Lyns, Alex J. Robinson, Chuck Labelle, and Ox. The rap metal band Project Wyze is also based in Sudbury. Sudbury has lacked a mid-sized performing arts centre since the demise of the Grand Theatre in the 1990s. High-profile musicians play at the Sudbury Community Arena. Bell Park's outdoor Grace Hartman Amphitheatre and Laurentian University's Fraser Auditorium are sometimes used for summer bookings. 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 Glad Tidings Tabernacle since Greater Sudbury still lacks a proper concert hall.

Film and television

Sudbury is home to several film and television production companies. March Entertainment's studio in Sudbury has produced a number of animated television series, including Chilly Beach, Maple Shorts, Yam Roll and Dex Hamilton: Alien Entomologist. The Truth, an action thriller starring Andy Garcia, Forest Whitaker and Eva Longoria, and was partially filmed in Sudbury in 2011.^[44] Independent filmmaker B. P. Paquette and producer Jason Ross Jallet are based in Sudbury.^[45] Sudbury is also home to the Science North Production Team, an award-winning producer of documentary films and multimedia presentations for museums.

Although many films and television programs have been shot in Sudbury, few have actually been set there. One exception is Bruce McDonald's 1987 film Roadkill which was filmed and set partly in Sudbury. Ontario's French language public broadcaster, TFO, produced the set comedy series Météo+ in Sudbury, which was co-written by Robert Marinier, an alumnus of the local high school École secondaire Macdonald-Cartier. Les Productions R. Charbonneau produced the television show Les Bleus de Ramville, written by the same team as Météo+, about hockey fans in the fictional small town of Ramville in Sudbury.^[46]

Attractions

Science North main building

Big Nickel

Science North is an interactive science museum and Northern Ontario's most popular tourist attraction^[47] with around 287,000 visitor per year (as of 2011).^[48] It consists of two snowflake-shaped buildings on the southwestern shore of Lake Ramsey and just south of the city's downtown core. There is also a former ice hockey arena on–site, which includes the complex's entrance and an IMAX theatre. The snowflake buildings are connected by a rock tunnel, which passes through a billion-year-old geologic fault. Sudbury's mining heritage is reflected in another major tourist attraction, Dynamic Earth. This interactive science museum focuses principally on geology and mining history exhibitions and is also home to the Big Nickel, one of Sudbury's most famous landmarks.

The Inco Superstack is the second tallest freestanding chimney in the world at 380m next to the Ekibastuz GRES-2 Power Station,^[49] and the second tallest structure in Canada after the CN Tower.^[50] It is the same height as the Empire State Building.

The city is also home to the Greater Sudbury Heritage Museums, a network of historical community museums, and a mining heritage monument overlooking the city's Bell Park. In 2007, the city undertook a community project named the Bridge of Nations, which saw the downtown Paris Street bridge retrofitted with 82 flagpoles, each of which will permanently display the flag of a world nation demographically represented among the population of Sudbury.^[51]

Sports

Sudbury Wolves make an entrance on home ice

The city is represented in ice hockey by the Sudbury Wolves of the Ontario Hockey League who play at the Sudbury Community Arena. The Sudbury Spartans football club have played in the Northern Football Conference since 1954.^[52] Laurentian University participates 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, the Brier, Canada's annual men's curling championships, in 1953 and 1983, the 2001 Scott Tournament of Hearts, the women's curling championship and the 2010 Ontario Summer Games.

Sudbury has many trails that are used year round. The Sudbury Trail Plan grooms almost 1,200 km of trails for snowmobiles in the winter.^[53] Twenty-three kilometres of diverse hiking, biking, and jogging trails are found in the Lake Laurentian Conservation Area near downtown.^[54] Other trails link Sudbury to areas outside of the city including the Trans Canada Trail, which passes through the city, and the Voyageur Hiking Trail. The city is also home to Sudbury Downs, a harness racing track located in Azilda.

Government

Tom Davies Square seen from the foot of the Bridge of Nations

From the city hall at Tom Davies Square, the city is headed by 12 council members and one mayor both elected every four years. The mayor of is Marianne Matichuk, who defeated John Rodriguez in the 2010 municipal election. The 2011 operating budget for Greater Sudbury was C$471 million, and the city employs 2006 full time workers.^[55] The provincial Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry has its head office in the city.

The city is represented federally by New Democratic Party Members of Parliament Glenn Thibeault in the Sudbury riding, and Claude Gravelle in Nickel Belt. Their counterparts in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario are Ontario Liberal Party Member of Provincial Parliament Rick Bartolucci in Sudbury and Ontario New Democratic Party Member of Provincial Parliament France Gélinas in Nickel Belt. Both federal and provincial politics in the city tend to be dominated by the Liberal and New Democratic parties. Historically, the Liberals have been stronger in the urban Sudbury riding, with the New Democrats dominant in the more rural Nickel Belt, although both ridings have elected members of both parties at different times.

History

The city's economic growth has 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.^[6] Prior to the creation of the Regional Municipality of Sudbury in 1973, the city could not 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, 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.^[6] 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.^[6] 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.^[6] 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.^[6]

In 1973, the city and its suburban communities were reorganized into the Regional Municipality of Sudbury. The expansion of the city's boundaries 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 during the 2006 municipal election. As of 2007, 75 per cent of the city's tax base comes from residential property taxes.^[56]

The former regional municipality was subsequently merged in 2001 into the single-tier city of Greater Sudbury. In 2006, there was renewed debate on the municipal amalgamation. Many residents of the former town of Rayside-Balfour, were unhappy with their position in the city, and lobbied for a de-amalgamation 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 Member of Provincial Parliament 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.

Communities

Copper Cliff is in the heart of the nickel mining industry

Greater Sudbury was formed by the amalgamation of five towns and two cities on January 1, 2001. In common usage, the city is still generally referred to as Sudbury, and often the amalgamated municipalities are still referred to by name and continue in some respects to maintain their own distinct identities. Each of the seven former municipalities encompasses numerous smaller neighbourhoods. Amalgamated cities (2001 Canadian census population) include: Sudbury (92,059) and Valley East (22,374).^[57] Towns (2001 Canadian census population) include: Rayside-Balfour (15,046),^[58] Nickel Centre (12,672),^[59] Walden (10,101),^[60] Onaping Falls (4,887),^[61] and Capreol (3,486).^[62] The Wanup area, formerly an unincorporated settlement outside of Sudbury's old city limits, was also annexed into the city in 2001, along with a largely wilderness area on the northeastern shore of Lake Wanapitei.

Infrastructure

Transportation

The Inco Superstack dominates the Sudbury skyline

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. There are three highways connecting Sudbury to the rest of Ontario: Highway 17 is the main branch of the Trans-Canada Highway, connecting the city to points east and west. An approximately 21-kilometre (13 mi) segment of Highway 17, from Mikkola to Whitefish, is freeway. The highway bypasses the city via two separately-constructed roads, the Southwest and Southeast Bypasses, that form a loop around the southern end of the city's urban core for traffic travelling through Highway 17. 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 being extended to Greater Sudbury and is scheduled for completion in 2017.;^[63] and Highway 144 leads north to Highway 101 just west of Timmins.

The Greater Sudbury Airport is served by three regional carrier lines: Air Canada Jazz to the Toronto Pearson International Airport, Porter Airlines to the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, and Bearskin Airlines to the Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport as well as several destinations in Northern Ontario including Kapuskasing, North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins, and Thunder Bay. Sunwing Vacations also offers seasonal chartered direct flights to Puerto Plata.^[64] Inter-city train service in Sudbury is provided by Via Rail, with The Canadian between Toronto and Vancouver and the Sudbury – White River train, both three times a week. It is also served by inter-city bus services Greyhound Canada and Ontario Northland Motor Coach Services. The city maintains a public transit system, Greater Sudbury Transit, transporting 3.7 million passengers each year.^[65]

Health care

Greater Sudbury serves as the health care centre for much of northeastern Ontario through Health Sciences North. Sudbury 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.^[66] Adult mental health services are also provided to the area through Health Sciences North, 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 Health Sciences North.

City and emergency services

Greater Sudbury is served by the Greater Sudbury Police Service,^[67] 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 provides prehospital paramedic services with over 150 full-time and part-time paramedics.^[68] Greater Sudbury Fire Services operates from 25 fire stations located throughout the city, with a combination 107 career staff and 350 volunteer fire fighters.^[69] 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. 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.

Education

Northern Ontario School of Medicine

Greater Sudbury is home to three postsecondary institutions: Laurentian University, a primarily undergraduate bilingual university with approximately 9000 students,^[70] Cambrian College, an English college of applied arts and technology with 4,500 full time and 9,500 part-time students,^[71] and Collège Boréal, a francophone college with 2000 enrolled.^[72] Laurentian University is home to the Sudbury campus of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. NOSM was the first medical school to be established in Canada in 30 years, having opened in September 2005. Laurentian is also undergoing preparations to launch the Northern Ontario School of Architecture, located in downtown Sudbury, which was formally greenlit by the provincial government in 2011 and will be the first new architecture school to launch in Canada in over 40 years.^[73]

English-language public schooling is provided by the Rainbow District School Board. The board operates 27 elementary and seven secondary schools in Sudbury, one school for students with special needs, and the Cecil Facer Youth Centre for young offenders.^[74] The Sudbury Catholic District School Board offers publicly funded English-language Catholic education, with 20 elementary schools, four high schools and an adult education centre.^[75] French-language public schools are administered by the Conseil scolaire de district du Grand Nord de l'Ontario with seven elementary and two secondary schools and one alternative secondary school.^[76] Finally, the Conseil scolaire de district catholique du Nouvel-Ontario provides publicly funded French-language Catholic education, with 15 elementary, four secondary schools, and one adult education secondary school.^[77] There are also two Christian private schools (Glad Tidings Academy and King Christian Academy), as well two Montessori schools (King Montessori Academy and the Montessori School of Sudbury).

Media

As the largest city in Northern 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. Sudbury has two local newspapers: the Sudbury Star, owned by Quebecor's Sun Media division, is published six days a week and has a weekday circulation of 17,530 as of 2006;^[78] and the Northern Life, which publishes twice a week and has a weekday circulation of 45,761 as of 2009.^[79]

Notable people

Notable people from Sudbury include television game-show Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek and Olympian Alex Baumann who won two gold medals and set two world records in swimming. Sudbury has produced 81 NHL hockey players, a number larger than any European city, including Hockey Hall of Fame inductees George Armstrong and Art Ross.^[80]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Greater Sudbury, Ontario

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

		Unorg. Sudbury District
	Nairn and Hyman		Markstay-Warren
		Greater Sudbury
	Unorg. Sudbury District Killarney	Whitefish Lake 6, Unorg. Sudbury District

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