The Wingman Chronicles

I heard over the weekend that the pulp mill in my home town – Marathon, Ontario – will be shutting down indefinitely, due to the worldwide financial meltdown, and depressed pulp prices.

The mill was built in 1945 or so, on what is perhaps the best deep-water harbour on Lake Superior between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie.

My Dad worked there for 38 years, and I spent five years there during the summers while attending university – it basically paid for my education, and then some.

Although the town currently hosts a second resource industry – the gold mines at Hemlo – and there are promising resource discoveries in the area, this is a hard blow for the town. The employees had been doing the right thing (taking a significant pay cut late in 2008).

My Mom still lives there, as do my Aunt and Uncle (all retired).  But my cousin still works there, and many of the folks I went to high school with will be in a tough position – late forties, looking for work in a town where there will be none.

West End Glasgow
Originally uploaded by Cuss.

Any place that has Haggis and Whiskey as part of the breakfast buffet can’t be all bad.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to dash across to Forfar, where my grandmother was born.