Amid growing concerns over pollution, HBM&S devised plans for a single, taller smoke stack to disperse toxic emissions from its copper smelter.
The towering chimney would replace the company’s two “short stacks,” which in the preceding decades had caused their share of coughing, hacking and withered gardens.
As long-time Flin Flonner Debbie Hiebert recalls, the commissioning of the new stack in 1974 yielded welcome results.
“My Grandma and Grandpa Hall would come from Ontario for summer visits,” says Hiebert. “Before the stack was built, my grandma was really sensitive to the smelter smoke and would basically walk around for the two weeks that she was here with a bandana over her mouth when she was outside because the smoke was so bothersome to her. And then once the stack was built, the air was so much better and grandma didn’t need to cover her face up anymore.
“By that time we were living down in Birchview [on Centre Street] and the air in Birchview was always better than the air uptown to start with, but it was just so much cleaner, period [with the new stack]. And I think people started noticing that their gardens were better. Trees were looking healthier, greener.”
The new stack scraped the sky as Canada’s third-tallest freestanding structure (today it is number 10). At the time, some residents had safety concerns about the stack.
“I was always glad to see the strobe lights on because on foggy days, when it was first built, our thoughts were, ‘Gosh, a plane is going to hit that when the clouds are low,’” recalls Hiebert. “So it’s always good to see those strobe lights going.”
Regardless of smelter smoke levels or smoke stack heights, Hiebert says Flin Flon was an idyllic place to come of age.
She grew up mainly on Centre Street, within easy walking distance of the iconic Johnny’s Confectionery, a regular destination during her formative years.
Hiebert recalls owner Johnny Boychuk’s habit of teasing the children who came to his store.
“If you had a few pennies, you could go buy the penny candy that he would have sitting by the till and pick out the different candies,” she says. “Then you’d give your money to Johnny and he’d always grab your thumb and hang onto your thumb. It was a just a habit that he had with kids, I don’t know, a teasing kind of thing.”
“I was always so shy, so I was kind of worried and scared when he would grab my thumb,” adds Hiebert with a laugh.
Hiebert took most of her early schooling, including junior high, at the now-defunct Birchview School on Green Street.
At Birchview, the ever-present threat of “the strap” – a leather belt used for thwacking hands of misbehavers – instilled fear in students.
“If you were cutting up in school, eventually you would get the strap,” Hiebert says. “The whole school would just go silent because this kid would be in the principal’s office with his hands held out and you hear this whack and then you’d hear the kid kind of scream. And do you know what? It really was not so nice for the kid that got the strap, but for weeks after, everybody in the school behaved because nobody wanted to get the strap.”
As a teenager, Hiebert often hit the ice with friends for Friday night public skates at the Whitney Forum. Other times they would go to the movies or grab some french fries at Marie’s Confectionery on Main Street.
She went to high school at Hapnot Collegiate, where her classes included typing using old-style typewriters – and old-style methods of encouraging students not to look at their fingers.
“We had a teacher who would walk around with a ruler and if you were looking at the typewriter, [you’d] kind of get your knuckles rapped,” says Hiebert.
While sports such as basketball and volleyball were an integral part of student life, Hiebert preferred helping out with the school yearbook, the Flinonian. She was editor of the yearbook in her graduating year of 1972.
That same year, she got married and immediately faced a common challenge of the era: finding a place to live amid a housing shortage.
Many residents rented out basement suites to young couples and single workers. After a few weeks of searching, Hiebert and her husband located one such suite on Whitney Street.
“We felt lucky to find that place,” she says.
The housing shortage was spurred in part by numerous hires at HBM&S, which was a bustling company in both Flin Flon and Snow Lake.
Many new company employees arrived from Newfoundland and Labrador, other parts of eastern Canada, or from places further afield.
“I got to know a lot of the people from Newfoundland and England and New Zealand, and still know a lot of them,” says Hiebert. “Some of them are still here. They all seemed to fit in really well and really became part of the community.”
Flin Flon introduced a long-awaited recreational offering for both new and long-standing residents when the Aqua Centre, the community’s first indoor public swimming pool, opened in 1975.
“It was great,” says Hiebert, who spent her share of time at the new pool. “There was always lots of people there, classes were full. It meant that people who could only swim in the summer could swim all year round.”
Scraping the sky
In April 1973, HBM&S, now part of Hudbay, unveiled plans for a single, colossal new industrial smoke stack that would overlook Flin Flon from the company’s metallurgical complex.
Awarded the $6-million construction contract for the project was Custodis (now Hamon Custodis), a US-based outfit still recognized as the world’s premier industrial chimney company.
The new stack’s purpose was strictly environmental: it would spew sulphur dioxide and other toxic copper smelter emissions from a much higher altitude than its twin predecessors, known as the short stacks.
The added height, it was anticipated, would carry emissions over the community and dispersed to the point where they would be less of an environmental concern.
At 825 feet, the stack would give Flin Flon Canada’s third-tallest freestanding structure. At the time, only Toronto’s CN Tower (1,815 feet) and the Inco’ mining company’s “superstack” in Sudbury, Ont. (1,247 feet) scraped the sky closer.
Construction began in earnest, with the key being Custodis’s colossal ring-shaped mould. It was filled with concrete and gradually raised on support rods as the liquid building material below it hardened.
Today a company would ply lasers to ensure a perfectly upright construction of the stack. That wasn’t an option back then, so workers turned to wartime technology: a bombsight, a device used to assist military pilots in bombing targets on the ground.
The stack construction was a slow, meticulous process. Finally in November 1974, the massive flue was connected to the smelter. Operations commenced in December.
The stack’s completion was greeted with much fanfare. It was symbolic not only of a cleaner age, but also of a more optimistic one. Given its $6-million budget, the project signaled a strong commitment to the future from the area’s largest employer.
“It was a fairly significant investment at the time and we wanted to make sure it would do exactly what we wanted it to do, and I believe it delivered on that,” Wayne Fraser, then environmental superintendent for HBM&S, told The Reminder in a previous interview.
Year of the strike
In 1971, a nearly five-month strike temporarily shut down HBM&S operations in Flin Flon and Snow Lake.
At the time, company workers were represented by three unions: United Steelworkers of America Local 7106, Operating Engineers Local 828 and Flin Flon Trades Association.
The Steelworkers and Operating Engin-eers – the large majority of HBM&S employees – had already come to terms with the company on a new contract.
But the Trades Association, bargaining separately on behalf of seven craft unions, was unable to reach a deal. Tradesworkers differed with HBM&S on issues ranging from wages, benefits and contract duration.
Both sides dug in their heels. Tradesworkers accused HBM&S of a dictatorial attitude; the company said revenues were down due to low copper prices and that it would take a strike if forced to.
On January 26, 1971, Trades Associa-tion members voted 91 per cent in favour of a strike. The next day, picket lines formed at entrances to company property.
Unable to continue operations without its 650 tradesworkers, HBM&S directed employees to close the Flin Flon mine and metallurgical plant. The shutdown concluded on January 29, at which time the tradesworkers were barred from company property.
Members of various news media outlets converged on Flin Flon. Reporters found there were staff members of the company on one side of the dispute while sons, fathers or in-laws were on the picket lines.
Frigid weather and cutting winds tore at the men on picket duty. Several picketers were appointed to kitchen duty, where they attended to food and coffee for the striking workers.
The 1,700 members of the Steelworkers were caught in the middle of the dispute. Under contract but with no jobs to go to, they began collecting employment insurance benefits.
It took until June 17 for the company and the tradesworkers to reach a settlement. The deal was ratified five days later.
As for the community, its economy had not died during the strike, but rather settled to a low ebb. Once the dispute was over, building permits for garages and home improvements signalled the general feeling of confidence – revitalization in the aftermath of Flin Flon’s first mine strike in 37 years.
– With files from the book Flin Flon
