When the Mine Goes Where Do We?

As Timmins lost it's ability to sustain being an exclusively gold mining town and other types of mining supported the local economy, the cultural impact of gold mining lasted. Even though there was a sense of loss with the impact that the Hollinger Mine and others had on the Timmins, especially with the amount of people they employed and the economic effects they held on the community, but that did not remove the material impacts of mining on the culture. The art, architecture, and landscape of Timmins was forever cemeneted in its roots as a gold mining company town. Timmins' motto and what it is known as is the "city with a heart of gold."(1) This emphasizes the core of the city being built on the millions of ounces of gold mined, even as copper and zinc mining have grown in prevalance.

Even without the inital mines that started the town, Timmins has continuously grown while keeping a culture intrinsicly tied to mining. One example of this comes from the Hoyle metallurgical site of the Kidd Creek Mine that kept a heard of buffalo from around 1972 to 1998. This was to display how the smelter was cause for no environmental concern.(2) Though this was not entirely convincing to locals, it still acted as a new part of Timmins' culture as people would make trips out to the metallurgical site just to see the buffalo.(3) This is just one example of how even though Timmins is no longer an exclusively gold mining town, there are new material cultural elements being made constantly in connection to mining.