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Sunny Day in Thunder Bay: Resolute Paper Mill

Smoke_Paper_Mill_P1010087 SMALL.jpg


Cheers, Mike​
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Mike,

I enjoyed this immediately and then spent a while looking at it in monochrome. After that I felt satisfied that I had given your work due attention! I wanted to see what shades there were in the smoke and how the sky might be processed. Yes, of course it would also be interesting in B&W but it would no longer be as quaint as a little red engine puffing up a slope for kids to be thrilled.

To my surprise, hours later I see that I forgot to comment!

The bellowing smoke could be clean steam or full of noxious particles, heavy metals or worse. Unlikely with making paper, but I just wonder! Probably harmless!

Interesting that we don’t have anywhere I know, live monitoring of industrial smoke stacks?

No doubt the companies are important employers and that means political power.

But all we see is a quaint image of a smoke stack and it’s part of the life blood of many a working town!

Asher
 
Thanks, Asher. The paper mill, along with the Bomardier railcar factory (which was formerly an airplane factory that made Hurricanes in WW2), the tranportation railway and port are all continuing parts of Thunder Bay's industrial heritage. The smoke is not clean steam although considerably cleaner than when we arrived just over 20 years ago. In those days, the town stank downwind of the mill, which offered free carwashes to those living in its vicinity to clean off the white powder emitted. Our real estate agent called the stink "the smell of prosperity". It's also unsurprising that cancer rates were high among mill workers then, with the workers subject to frequent medical testing even now. So the picture might look pretty but cost lives in order for people to read their daily news in the New York Times, The Guardian, etc.
Cheers, Mike
 
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