Writing the guide to regreening: turning Sudbury's regreening expertise into a marketable product in the works.

AuthorMyers, Ella
PositionSudbury

Sudbury's environmental destruction and subsequent reclamation is one of the city's defining moments. From a blackened, barren nickel capital to a beacon of regreening and responsible mining around the world, Sudbury has come a long way since the 1970s.

A major project is germinating between the mayor's office and Laurentian University that would capitalize on the expertise built from the recovery process.

Laurentian's vice-president of research, Rui Wang, introduced the Sudbury Protocol at the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation's (GSDC) first Resourceful City talk in November.

Wang describes the protocol as "a scientifically proven and practically implementable protocol that can be used as a step-by-step guideline and standard for government and industry at different levels, for sustainable mining industry and economic development with the environmental and the societal impacts at the centre and front of the planning and operations." He said that since moving to Sudbury, he's pored over the hundreds of peer-reviewed journals, surveys and books related to the regreening. He wants to see the information in one, accessible document. He approached Mayor Brian Bigger in the spring to discuss the concept of condensing the information into a marketable, usable product.

Bigger and Wang have developed a strong bond over the past few months. The two men have had similar, if inverse experiences with their childhood landscapes.

Bigger grew up in the bleak, acidic 1960s Flour Mill neighbourhood.

"As a kid I played on the rocks behind the flour mills--we called it the mountains; that was my area to explore, yet it was black rock and dead tree stumps and a desolate landscape. That's what we knew as little kids," said Bigger.

Wang, on the other hand, came from a lush, small village in China, next to the Mountain of Seven Treasures. He visited in 1995 before moving to Canada to say a final goodbye to his childhood memories.

"There were beautiful mountains, a clean river ran through with fish, and my childhood playmates were still there," he said. But, where Bigger has seen his city transform into a centre of environmental innovation and reclamation in the last few decades, Wang has seen the opposite.

"When I was in China in November, I wanted to renew my childhood memory. In 20 years, everything changed. There's a gold mine in front of the mountain, and a sulfur mine in the middle. The air is stinky, the trees are half dead, there's a half-bare...

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