Falconbridge Ltd. - Social Impact in Sudbury

Social Impact in Sudbury

Falconbridge lent its name to a company town northeast of Sudbury which grew to be a community in its own right. The town of Falconbridge was incorporated by the provincial government in 1957. It was organized along with several other communities into the Town of Nickel Centre and Regional Municipality of Sudbury in 1973; the regional municipality was in turn amalgamated into today's city of Greater Sudbury in 2001.

Some Falconbridge workers also lived in the nearby community of Happy Valley, which was abandoned in the 1960s due to pollution from the Falconbridge smelter.

"Falco", as it was often called by Sudbury residents, remained for decades the second-largest employer in the Sudbury area, exceeded only by rival mining giant Inco. The economic fortune of the city was tied to those of the mining companies, as a strike at either company had a major effect on the livelihood of thousands of workers. The effect diminished as economic diversification progressed in the 1980s and 1990s.

Citizens, particularly workers and their families, came to develop an attachment to what were seen as local companies with significant size and influence in the mining industry. In particular, a certain degree of rivalry between workers at the two mining giants, who were members of rival labour unions, developed. In the 1950s and early 1960s, factional wars between the competing unions sometimes led to riots in the streets of Sudbury.

A proposal to merge Inco and Falconbridge in 2006 was headed with the slogan "Two proud histories, one great future", in reference to the strong identities which workers and the community had attached to the companies.

A major street in Sudbury is named Falconbridge Road, after the company and community. In 2007, Xstrata donated Falconbridge's historic Edison Building, its onetime head office, to the city of Greater Sudbury to serve as the new home of the city archives.