Tobermory, ON to Sudbury, ON

Today I visited Manitoulin Island, Ontario, which is the largest island in a freshwater lake in the world.  It is located in Lake Huron, on the western side of Georgian Bay.  It covers 1,068 square miles, and itself has 108 lakes.  Lake Mantou, at 40.5 square miles, is the largest lake in a freshwater island in the world.  Part of the island consists of First Nation reserves.  (First Nations are Canada's reference to indigenous or native tribes).
Tourism and agriculture are the primary economic activities.

To get to Manitoulin Island I took a large vehicle ferry from Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula.  The voyage took about two hours and was quite pleasant.  Here is a picture of the ferry before the vehicles were loaded.  A sequence of pictures showing the bow dropping is on the Miscellany 2 page.

Yawning Bow of Ferry
To Manitoulin Island, Ontario

My destination of Sudbury was because of the huge nickel mine located there.  International Nickel Company has operated the mine since 1902.  The company was bought in 2008 by the Brazilian mining conglomerate Companhia Vale do Rio Doce.

The Sudbury Basin is the result of a meteor strike that occurred 1.8 billion years ago.  It is said to be the second-largest meteor impact on earth.  The meteor is estimated to have been six miles across, and formed a crater at least 150 miles across.  As a result of erosion, the remaining part of the crater consists of the basin, which is 39 miles long and 19 miles deep.  Debris from the impact traveled 500 miles, with rock fragments having been found as far away as Minnesota.  Some scientific modeling suggests that debris most likely scattered globally, with evidence of of the debris having been lost to erosion.  The large impact crater filled with magma from below the earth's crust.  As this magma cooled, it developed deposits of nickel, copper, platinum, palladium, gold and other minerals.  The mineral deposits were discovered by Albert Salter in 1856, but mining exploration was not feasible until the railroads came into the area in the 1880s.

The mining activity up to the 1970s had a devastating environmental impact on the Sudbury area.  A byproduct of the smelting process was the emission of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere.  Considerable effort has been made to remedy the devastation, particularly the processing of sulphur dioxide into sulphuric acid, which is captured and sold for other industrial uses.  They also constructed a 385-foot "Superstack" in 1973, which emits most water vapor.

385-foot Superstack
At Inco Nickel Smelting Plant

A major "scenic" feature of the Sudbury area is the tailings piles.  Since the metal ores compose only about five percent of the mined rock, the remainder winds up in these huge piles.  It appears that some have been covered with topsoil and seeded with grasses.  Overall, this has been an interesting place to visit.

30-foot Big Nickel
At Sudbury, Ontario

Mileage: 139.  Cumulative mileage: 6,968.