O’Donnell

History

In 1913 the nickel mines of the Sudbury Basin were in full swing. In a little mining town named Copper Cliff, shafts, crushers, and roasts yards dotted the landscape of the Canadian Copper Company (INCO), geared to produce a maximum output of nickel.

At the height of the activities, they harvested local wood for the roast yards. When burned it turned into poisonous sulfurous smoke, which killed all the remaining vegetation in the area. In Copper Cliff this was already a done deal. However the roasting process was beginning to affect not just the environment, but the health of the general population in the communities of Copper Cliff and Sudbury. Numerous residents began to complain about chronic health problems. Their plight became a major concern, especially in Sudbury, where the Mond Nickel Co. had just transferred all their smelting and roasting operations to Coniston just east of the town. They needed a solution to remedy the situation and quickly.

Along the Algoma Eastern Railway, specifically at mileage point 17.5, they established a large roast yard in 1915, named after John O’Donnell, an employee. Spanning 2.25 kilometres (1 mile) in length, they divided the yard into two long strips and then subdivided them into individual beds, each 18 metres (60 ft.) wide by 30.5 metres (100 ft.) long. They piled cordwood to a height of about four feet (1.2 metres) and spread another 8 feet (2.4 metres) of “green ore” over the cordwood which they then set ablaze for six to eight months. While some beds burned sulfur, they broke up other beds after they finished the initial roasting and shipped them back to Copper Cliff for further milling and smelting. They needed about 200 men to operate the yards, manually spreading or removing ore with picks, shovels, and dynamite.

They established a townsite to house the large work force and their families. The company surveyed four streets, Foley, Savage, Vermillion and Ellis, in an ‘L’ shaped pattern, where they built housing for 600 residents.

They constructed the main townsite along Vermillion and Ellis streets. Amenities included W. Boyle’s general store, G. Dunsmore’s club house, a post office, school, town hall and jail. There were ten duplexes and ten single dwellings. The two-storey store also contained additional apartments. These were the only streets that had water and sewer services.

Savage and Foley Street contained additional ‘homes’ for temporary employees. In actuality they placed 17 boxcars to house extra families on these streets. There was also a staff house, a dry house (showering facilities), and Lepki’s Boarding House. All homes had electrical service. The townsite also had a baseball field/hockey rink, flag station and an ice house. Doctor Boyce, from Creighton Mine, visited the settlement about once a month.

An ore bridge, completed in 1918, drastically reduced the workforce to 40 men. However the community continued to exist with a markedly reduced population, hovering around 100 residents. About the same time they removed all the spare boxcars. In 1921-22 a massive curtailment in INCO’s nickel production resulted in a temporary shutdown both at the yards and at most of INCO’s mines. They removed all the residents until activities resumed in 1922. In 1923 Sam Fera of Creighton purchased Boyle’s general store. Sam used a jitney to ship deliveries to O’Donnell and transport passengers to and from Creighton Mine.

By 1929 open air roasting was again under scrutiny. The government began to question the validity of the process particularly since newer milling techniques were already in use in Norway, a country that had just shut down their last roast yard in 1927. In September 1930 the new roasting plant in Copper Cliff was finally operational. They officially terminated roasting at O’Donnell a month earlier. A small handful of workers remained until 1931 to clean up the site and remove equipment. During the remaining part of the decade, they removed the ore bridge and rails. The yards were left to sit empty, devoid of any vegetation, a solemn testament to the harshness of nickel mining.