Michael Atkins

As some of you may have noticed there is an election about the land. It is an important election. I have managed what, for me, is the unthinkable. I have ignored it. No bets. No polls. No debates. No web sites. No battles.

If you're outside of Sudbury, you probably haven't heard much about Inco's Copper Cliff Refinery. It's not that sexy and certainly at a 140 jobs doesn't rank on the misery scale as we watch the crumbling of forestry employment across the North.

Sometimes we get surprised. The purchase of Falconbridge by Inco is big news.

I made a pitch the other day to the Ontario Mining Association. It wasn’t that risqué, really.

I arrived in Thunder Bay in the spring of 1971. I was just back from my official post-university motorcycle trip to Europe and broke. I’d never heard of Thunder Bay. Neither had anyone else. It had recently changed its name.

Last month, I had the pleasure of addressing the annual meeting of the Northeastern Ontario Chambers of Commerce. I use the term “annual” advisedly, as I am told the last annual general meeting was some 14 years ago.

The challenge in life is to figure out what is important. Trite, I know, but a place to start. If you are lucky, your family will pound the essentials into you at a young age and the rest will more or less play out reasonably.

For those of you who are regulars, you will know I am now in Nova Scotia, spraining my ankles on shoreline rocks, slipping on the seaweed, walking the beaches, disappearing in the fog, dodging lobsters (I’m allergic), promising my daughter I’ll get t

One of the things I like about this new provincial government is that in spite of some of the obvious missteps in the first couple of years, they seem prepared to take some risk and make some change.

There is concern, I think we would agree, about political corruption in Ottawa. Michael Atkins The spectacle is hard to avoid.