Post by Max on Apr 10, 2007 22:51:11 GMT -3
Nickel City -- City of Lakes -- Nickel City of Lakes -- or City of Fakes?
Trying to remake Sudbury's image is a hugely ambitious project; if one were to take it serious. Sudbury's transition from our 'Nickel City' motto to a 'City of Lakes' has been in progress for two years, but what has council achieved? To judge by their record their aspirations do reach very far. Like any mission statement, an image change is easy to state but hard to accomplish, and I have yet to hear any TV news or weather caster refer to Sudbury as the City of Lakes; they still call us the Nickel City. Council talks a good line but their actions are seriously out of joint with reality, as they fail to invest the resources necessary to make a change work, completely lack a conceptual set of blueprints of how they will make a change happen and what the end result will be. Given council's lackluster motivation and conflicted effort, most citizens will continue to ignore the yawning commitment gap between city feel good pronouncements and reality.
Importantly, council's crass decision to shed our 100+ year old Nickel City motto without any citizen input was fundamentally stupid, insulting to our forefathers, destructive to our heritage, and made in ignorance. This deeply flawed dictatorial process appears to have slid under the publics radar and a dose of reality and a clear-eyed understanding might be in order. Minneapolis St. Paul Minnesota (MSP) is 600 miles from Sudbury and its motto has been a City of Lakes for over five decades, while no other mining community is know as the Nickel City. The MSP metropolitan area has 1,000 lakes while Sudbury has 300, thus council has taken us from being original to being an unoriginal copycat, and I'd like to know what council would say if another smaller mining community decided to coin itself the Nickel City? A profile and motto matters because recognition creates influence and influence is essential in helping a city get its way in the world. This is why every city adopts one, and our motto should reflect the city we truly are. In considering choices, ingenuity is unlimited, and like baking a cake, creating a chic motto becomes easier once you have the right recipe and know what the ingredients are. As our very existence is a result of our mines, not our lakes, our international interests should outweigh local interests in being the determining factor when crafting the maxim. Therefore, since no one can ignore our long-standing rich mining market realism must prevail.
More importantly, Sudbury is the most modern mining community in he world and we should be enormously proud of it. I am. Given the price of nickel and our historic and proven reserves, we are also the world's official Nickel City more today then ever before, and we have our world famous Big Nickel monument to prove it. Sudbury is also about to take the world stage again by expanding our internationally known reputation and profile as an industry leader with the construction of the 25+ million $ Centre For Excellence in Mining Innovation. In contrast, other than creating a mirage by changing our maxim to a City of Lakes, council makes no meaningful investment to exploit our lakes for local or tourism initiatives. Moreover, out of the 940 million $ 2006-07 budgets, our hypocritical motto coining council's refused to spend a mere 45,000 $ to stop our beaches and lakes from continuing to be a geese toilet, which makes enjoying some beaches difficult and probably caused the E. coli outbreaks that closed Ramsey Lake twice in the last two years. The future implications of council's soft policy regarding our beaches and lake water should be obvious to all. Anytime there is a gap between what leaders say and what leaders do, the creditability of the leaders suffer, and in this case, there is a mismatch in the audio of the leaders talk and the video of the leaders behaviour, as councils lack of action do not match their City of Lakes soundtrack. If our City of 'Fakes' are uncomfortable with our Nickel City motto and status then maybe they shouldn't be running our city, for without our mines we could become the world's most modern 300-lake ghost town.
In light of these doses of reality, our internationally known Nickel City motto serves our city well, and it should not be changed at all; but etched in stone forever. Nevertheless, our misguided council is still bent on changing our motto entirely, however, in my considered opinion; it should only be enhance to proclaim Sudbury the 'Nickel City of Lakes'. This original motto and creative combination of words ideally meshes seamlessly, protects our historic past, recognizes our current status, and emphasizes our many lakes, which, ultimately, allows us to ride their waves into our future without mindlessly snubbing our deep-rooted past.
What do you think?
Trying to remake Sudbury's image is a hugely ambitious project; if one were to take it serious. Sudbury's transition from our 'Nickel City' motto to a 'City of Lakes' has been in progress for two years, but what has council achieved? To judge by their record their aspirations do reach very far. Like any mission statement, an image change is easy to state but hard to accomplish, and I have yet to hear any TV news or weather caster refer to Sudbury as the City of Lakes; they still call us the Nickel City. Council talks a good line but their actions are seriously out of joint with reality, as they fail to invest the resources necessary to make a change work, completely lack a conceptual set of blueprints of how they will make a change happen and what the end result will be. Given council's lackluster motivation and conflicted effort, most citizens will continue to ignore the yawning commitment gap between city feel good pronouncements and reality.
Importantly, council's crass decision to shed our 100+ year old Nickel City motto without any citizen input was fundamentally stupid, insulting to our forefathers, destructive to our heritage, and made in ignorance. This deeply flawed dictatorial process appears to have slid under the publics radar and a dose of reality and a clear-eyed understanding might be in order. Minneapolis St. Paul Minnesota (MSP) is 600 miles from Sudbury and its motto has been a City of Lakes for over five decades, while no other mining community is know as the Nickel City. The MSP metropolitan area has 1,000 lakes while Sudbury has 300, thus council has taken us from being original to being an unoriginal copycat, and I'd like to know what council would say if another smaller mining community decided to coin itself the Nickel City? A profile and motto matters because recognition creates influence and influence is essential in helping a city get its way in the world. This is why every city adopts one, and our motto should reflect the city we truly are. In considering choices, ingenuity is unlimited, and like baking a cake, creating a chic motto becomes easier once you have the right recipe and know what the ingredients are. As our very existence is a result of our mines, not our lakes, our international interests should outweigh local interests in being the determining factor when crafting the maxim. Therefore, since no one can ignore our long-standing rich mining market realism must prevail.
More importantly, Sudbury is the most modern mining community in he world and we should be enormously proud of it. I am. Given the price of nickel and our historic and proven reserves, we are also the world's official Nickel City more today then ever before, and we have our world famous Big Nickel monument to prove it. Sudbury is also about to take the world stage again by expanding our internationally known reputation and profile as an industry leader with the construction of the 25+ million $ Centre For Excellence in Mining Innovation. In contrast, other than creating a mirage by changing our maxim to a City of Lakes, council makes no meaningful investment to exploit our lakes for local or tourism initiatives. Moreover, out of the 940 million $ 2006-07 budgets, our hypocritical motto coining council's refused to spend a mere 45,000 $ to stop our beaches and lakes from continuing to be a geese toilet, which makes enjoying some beaches difficult and probably caused the E. coli outbreaks that closed Ramsey Lake twice in the last two years. The future implications of council's soft policy regarding our beaches and lake water should be obvious to all. Anytime there is a gap between what leaders say and what leaders do, the creditability of the leaders suffer, and in this case, there is a mismatch in the audio of the leaders talk and the video of the leaders behaviour, as councils lack of action do not match their City of Lakes soundtrack. If our City of 'Fakes' are uncomfortable with our Nickel City motto and status then maybe they shouldn't be running our city, for without our mines we could become the world's most modern 300-lake ghost town.
In light of these doses of reality, our internationally known Nickel City motto serves our city well, and it should not be changed at all; but etched in stone forever. Nevertheless, our misguided council is still bent on changing our motto entirely, however, in my considered opinion; it should only be enhance to proclaim Sudbury the 'Nickel City of Lakes'. This original motto and creative combination of words ideally meshes seamlessly, protects our historic past, recognizes our current status, and emphasizes our many lakes, which, ultimately, allows us to ride their waves into our future without mindlessly snubbing our deep-rooted past.
What do you think?