Good morning, Greater Sudbury! Here are a few stories to start your day on this Thursday morning.
Blaming feds for Hwy 69 inaction is ‘b------t’: Nickel Belt MP
Stepping in to address a question on the province’s long-stalled four-laning of Highway 69, provincial Northern Development Minister Greg Rickford asked, “Where are the feds?” “You’re talking about (matters of) national interest, and we need to make sure that we have a federal government that’s partnering with us on those priorities and not making highway safety a political decision,” Rickford said at the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities conference in Sudbury on Monday. Completing the four-laning of the final 68 kilometres of Highway 69, he added, is an issue that “offers up both safety and economic efficiency for the safe passage of people and the efficient passage of goods and services.” Rickford cited U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower’s Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which pledged 90 per cent of the cost of construction of interstate highways, as an example to follow. “I’m not happy,” Nickel Belt Liberal MP Marc Serré told Sudbury.com in response to Rickford’s comments. “It’s bullshit.”
A symbol of home: Superstack the topic of new anthology
As a Sudburian who spent the better part of two decades living in Calgary before moving back home, the Superstack has something of an emotional hold on Emily Andrews. While we’ve technologically moved past the need for the 381-metre (1,250-foot) structure, which was completed in 1970 by the mining company Inco, it’s still a symbol of home. And that symbol may not be there much longer. The stack, situated near Copper Cliff’s Little Italy neighbourhood but visible even on the city’s outskirts, was fully taken out of service in 2020. Vale, the company that bought out Inco earlier this century, has stated its intention to dismantle the Superstack, although it’s unknown at this time when the demolition will actually begin. “It's almost the last thing you see when you leave here, but when you come back, that's the first thing you look at, the first thing you find to say, ‘OK, now I'm back in Sudbury, I saw the smokestack,’” said Andrews, reminiscing about her sporadic visits back to Sudbury via the Greyhound bus as a “broke” young woman.
Aggressive driver carrying coke, crystal meth flees police
A driver who attempted to flee Greater Sudbury Police before crashing and finally being caught after a foot chase was carrying a large quantity of illicit drugs in his vehicle, say police. On May 3, a motor vehicle with unauthorized license plates was observed by the Sudbury police being driven on MR35 in Chelmsford. Detectives from the Break, Enter and Robbery (BEAR) Unit, who had spotted the vehicle, requested assistance from patrol operations to conduct a traffic stop on the vehicle. Upon seeing the marked police cruiser, the driver began driving at a high rate of speed on Elm Street. Due to the driver’s aggressive driving behaviour, the officer in the marked cruiser did not pursue the vehicle in the interest of public safety. The driver of the vehicle continued to drive erratically, losing control of the vehicle and striking a parked car at a residence on Ethelbert Street.
OPP laid 46 impaired charges across the Northeast in April
Ontario Provincial Police detachments in Northeastern Ontario collectively laid 46 impaired driving charges. Of the 46 occurrences, OPP said 21 were officer-initiated traffic stops, four were from a Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere (R.I.D.E.) program, 15 were traffic complaints from the public and six were officers responding to collisions. Thirty of the drivers charged were impaired by the consumption of alcohol, while 16 drivers were impaired as a result of the consumption of a drug.
Opposition leaders make their cases to Northern municipal leaders
Projecting themselves as politicians who will listen to Northern Ontarians, Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles and Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie made their respective cases in Sudbury. “I have never felt that Queen’s Park is further from Northern Ontario than it is now,” Stiles said during her remarks, adding that provincial leaders “are very disconnected from the North.” There’s “unprecedented opportunity” in the North, Crombie said in her remarks, asserting that her party will support Northern Ontario’s mining sector, tourism and arts and culture in the North. Both opposition leaders spoke during the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities conference at the Holiday Inn and Conference Centre in Sudbury on May 7. They chased a series of speeches the prior day from six provincial ministers and associate ministers, to offer a counterpoint to the Progressive Conservatives’ assertion the province is on track.
Mary Stefura devoted her life to building city’s Ukrainian community
Mary Stefura, who devoted six decades of her life to the Ukrainian community in Sudbury and the community at large, died April 30 at the age of 91. Her obituary said Mary and her husband John (predeceased 2017) were trailblazers, actively involved in the early days of Sudbury Symphony Orchestra, Sudbury Theatre Centre and the Art Gallery of Sudbury. Of her many accomplishments, Stefura was most proud of bringing the Ukrainian Seniors’ Centre, Barvinok-on-the-Park, Altanka Garden and Hnatyshyn Park to fruition.
