Mining for Fish
Fish farming in Atikokan
by Charlie Angus
HighGrader Magazine November/December 2000
When it comes to tales of hard-luck mining towns, Atikokan is just one of scores across Northern Ontario. A community that grew up around a once thriving iron ore industry, the town has been struggling to reinvent itself since the closure of the Steep Rock Iron Ore operations in the late 1970s.
Like other northern communities, Atikokan is hampered by a dwindling local tax base, isolation from larger markets and the constraints of a limited local economy. It's present population of 3,500 is about half what it was when the pit trucks and scoop shovels were hauling iron from the ground.
And like other post-industrial mining towns, Atikokan has had to deal with the liability of a spent mining landscape - five massive pits slowly filling with water.
But Atikokan is attempting to buck the hard-luck trend and some entrepreneurs in town are hoping to use the spent pits as a source of economic renewal.
David Lindsay is a hard guy to get on the phone. The founder of the Atikokan Fish Cooperative, Lindsay is always on the move between his processing plant in Atikokan and his fish operation. As well, he's always on the phone to customers, suppliers and possible investors.
Snow Lake fish products sell in markets like Chicago, Montreal and Toronto, but despite 12 years of success, Lindsay admits it hasn't been an easy journey convincing possible investors. The reason?
Investors can't seem to get their heads around the news that the fish are grown in an abandoned mine.
The mine in question is the abandoned Caland iron-ore pit. Since the mine pumps shut down in 1979 the pit has steadily filled with clear, clean groundwater.
Lindsay put his first Rainbow Trout in the waters of the Caland in 1988 and has had no problems growing fish in the water since. But getting support has been another story.
"Nobody was interested in working with us when I started pushing this idea," he says. "We've always been underfunded."
One of the few organizations who took an interest in Lindsay's idea, however, was mining giant Falconbridge.
Mike Sudbury, former director of Environmental Affairs, says he remembers when Lindsay's business plan appeared on his desk.
"Since we have open pits that we have to deal with, this project seemed like it was worth studying."
Falconbridge supplied money to Lakehead University to conduct studies of the water system that had formed in the abandoned iron-ore pits.
What was most interesting was the fact that, while the Caland pit seemed perfect for a flourishing fish operation, the neighbouring pit - the Hogarth, was not amenable to any aquatic life.
Sudbury says the Lakehead study set out to find out why.
"The deposit is very interesting from a geological point of view. The iron was contained in a dolomite matrix and dolomite is a neutralizing agent."
Sudbury says that higher levels of calcium compounds in the Caland pit have helped the emerging lake sustain life by neutralizing acidity in the water.

Worker Co-Op
David Lindsay describes himself as a "regular guy."
He had a dream about creating a workable fish farm but admits he had little in the way of entrepreneurial experience.
"I didn't know much about business but I'd worked in enough places to know what didn't work. I've worked in places where people stole from the employer and slept on the job, or in places where the employers didn't pay people enough and made them work in unsafe conditions."
Lindsay's solution was to create a worker's co-operative.
"This wasn't going to be a situation where the owner has 90% and the employees have 10%."
The operation now has 8 full-time employees and four part-time workers.
Lindsay says his 200 tonne a year operation faced a big crisis when the Federal government announced that, in order to sell fish out of province or out of country, they had to build a processing plant.
Lindsay says he was able to meet the cost of building the plant because he didn't opt for labour-saving machines.
"I didn't want to invest in machines that replaced people. I have faith in people. I had 16 people in the plant and we were all greenhorns. We cut slow and we cut sloppy but we developed our skills and now we have a very competent crew that can cut 200 to 300 pounds an hour."
The operation is based on Rainbow Trout farming because as Lindsay says, Rainbow Trout will return good money very quickly.
As well, the operation has grown Brook Trout along with Atlantic and Pacific salmon.
But Lindsay isn't just interested in making a dollar off intensive fish farming, his goal is to restore the lake as a multi-species aqua-culture.
"I'm really interested in doing something with sturgeon. Nobody wants to touch sturgeon because there is no return for 30 or 40 years but I'm really concerned about them because there are so few."
He says the natural colonization of the lake has been amazing to watch.
"There are suckers in the lake and millions of shiners."

Like the Pyramids
Shawn Allaire is another Atikokan resident with big dreams for the abandoned pits. The director of a local museum known as the Mining Attraction, Allaire has plans to use the stark landscape of the old Steep Rock Mine as an eco-tourism adventure.
"Mining history is wonderful but it doesn't capture the imagination of today's values which is environment."
Allaire says that tourists who come to the mining museum want to see something more than black and white photographs and artifacts.
The problem for Allaire, is that the local Ministry of Natural Resources actively discourages people from visiting the abandoned pits.
Allaire says this is a shame.
"The roads out to the mine are in better shape than town roads. The mountain biking potential at the mine is fantastic. People who come from as far away as Utah are looking for something different. They want to see the mines and the landscape."
Allaire says that far from being an eyesore, the abandoned pits are breathtaking.
"It's astonishingly beautiful. It took me a long time to get used to the enormity of what has gone on here. It's like seeing the pyramids of Egypt. There is something about seeing a landscape that has undergone so much human endeavor that it's humbling. That's where the learning starts."
Allaire is working to sell the town and the Ministry on building a look-out over the pits.
She says her concern isn't just for the tourism values.
"Unless we bring tourism here, Toronto will do what it has done in Kirkland Lake again."
She admits that like other small towns in the north, the ideas are sometimes bigger than the budget. But Allaire is undaunted.
"The pits are so majestic. Sometimes things do have a happy ending."

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