Go north young person: falling into the Ring of Fire on Open Ontario’s exotic last frontier
Posted: March 10th, 2010 | No Comments »
Signing of a Memorandum of Co-operation between the Ontario government and the Webequie First Nation, May 14, 2004. The memorandum committed “both parties to enhance communication and understanding that may foster job creation and economic growth in the area.”
The vital last words on the McGuinty government’s new “Open Ontario” throne speech won’t be heard until the provincial budget a few weeks hence.
Some think Premier Dalton just “wants to change the channel … to forget eHealth and the HST.” Others believe that while “his path converged with Harper’s during tough times, [the] Ontario Premier’s path to recovery looks different.” Still others think Premier McGuinty has at last revealed himself as “At heart … a ‘Reddish’ Tory” (just like Bland Bill Davis, 1971–1985, and the first great Liberal premier of Canada’s most populous province, Oliver “Smile-when-you-oxymoronically-call-him-the-Christian-politician” Mowat, 1872–1896).
In the age of the return of the ancient resource economy first invented by The Fur Trade in Canada, however, one very new McGuintyesque Open Ontario theme is already grabbing a lot of attention — with various good reasons.

The Ring of Fire is an area of approximately 5,120 square kilometres around McFauld's Lake. TORONTO STAR GRAPHIC.
See, eg, this poignant passage in the March 8, 2010 throne speech: “In 2008, northern Ontario became home to our first diamond mine … Your government will build on that success — particularly in the region known as the Ring of Fire [hello Johnny Cash — and June Carter — 1963] … It is said to contain one of the largest chromite deposits in the world — a key ingredient in stainless steel … There is no substitute for chromite … It’s the most promising mining opportunity in Canada in a century.”
In some intriguing respects, this particular “Open Ontario” theme just revives the “New Ontario” (aka “Nouvel-Ontario”) northern frontier that was in fact the big breaking news in the province a century ago. (“Remember Ross,” advised an early 20th century Grit newspaper: “He is Building up New Ontario.”) But in the early 21st century, the central Canadian resource economy is finally pushing into the exotic most northerly reaches of the modern Ontario territory. And there are without doubt some new and unusual challenges ahead.
Already, we have such headlines as “Dalton McGuinty bets big on mining, critics fear eco-disaster.” But when you look at the official Ontario road map that more or less matches the chromite-rich “Ring” probably the most striking feature of this far northeastern region is that there are still no roads there at all! (Or at least not of the sort that the Ministry of Transportation chooses to view as official, etc.) The bush plane — an innovation of the early 20th century — remains the essential mode of regional transit, supplemented by the ancient canoe in this vast boreal-forest geography of rivers and lakes.



OTTAWA. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3, 2010. [UPDATED MARCH 4]. The Canadian federal parliament is
Meanwhile, our very best wishes to all the MPs and unelected (and unreformed) Canadian Senators, who gather in Ottawa today. How wonderful it would be if they actually could set aside their own partisan careers for a brief moment over the next few months, and somehow manage to do something that would make Canadians half as proud as Mlle Rochette and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver 2010. And who knows? Stranger things have in fact happened at least once or twice in Canada’s diverse, exotic, and improbable history. It is not entirely impossible that they will happen again — and again, and again, and again.











