Sioux lookout lays mining groundwork: Northwest communities, industry, First Nation study Ring of Fire transload facility.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Northwestern Ontario

With no funding, plan or direction coming from Queen's Park on Ring of Fire transportation infrastructure, Sioux Lookout is taking the lead in promoting a road-to-rail transload facility to move material and supplies in and out of the largely dormant mineral belt.

The northwestern Ontario town has pulled together a "working group" of like-minded business leaders, community and First Nation partners to craft a logistics concept called the Integrated Transportation System (ITS).

It binds together the town's local highway, rail and air connections, and creates much-needed brownfield space.

To Vicki Blanchard, the town's economic development manager, Sioux Lookout is the "place to start" to stage, ship and transfer raw materials, industrial supplies, fuel and goods to remote communities and the potential Ring of Fire mining camp through an east-west road.

"This is truly a regional opportunity," she said.

The northwestern Ontario town of 5,200 is situated 65 kilometres off the Trans-Canada Highway. Highway 516 runs from the town northeast to Pickle Lake, which is the beginning of a winter road network serving remote First Nation communities.

The ITS working group was formed last March at the Prospectors and Developers mining show in Toronto.

It includes Noront Resources, the lead mining player in the Ring of Fire; Canadian National Railway (CN), whose main line runs through town; First Mining Finance, a holding company with several prospective gold properties in northwestern Ontario; Morgan Fuels, a major fuel hauler to many remote communities; and the township of Pickle Lake, where a proposed east-west corridor to the Ring of Fire would conceivably begin.

Included in the group on the First Nations side are the communities of Lac Seul, Slate Falls, Cat Lake and Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, all signatories to a friendship accord with Sioux Lookout. Also at the table is a collection of provincial bureaucrats from various ministries that's called the Northern Economic Transition Team.

"Sioux Lookout is really the corridor for the movement of freight to the communities in the North from Winnipeg," said Al Howie, general manager at Morgan Fuels, based in Sioux Lookout.

Large amounts of freight, fuel and building materials to supply these communities come from Manitoba.

"There is a lot of need for this type of facility with the development that's occurring," said Howie, mentioning Watay Power's multi-million-dollar transmission line project, ongoing...