Coniston Coniston was a part of the geographic Neelon Township, which was named after
Sylvester Neelon. The
Canadian Northern Railway (a predecessor of the
Canadian National Railway) arrived in 1905, with Coniston lying along its transcontinental line. It was joined in 1908 by the
Canadian Pacific Railway, which constructed a new direct line linking Sudbury and Toronto via Romford Junction. The population had risen to 20 families during this period and settlers requested the establishment of a local post office, which had to be named; the name Neelon was originally considered, but Dennis O'Brien, a local settler who became the first
postmaster, decided on the name Coniston after it was suggested to him by T. Johnson, a railway construction superintendent who had been reading a novel set in the village of
Coniston in the Lake District of England. The
Edison Ore-Milling Company was unsuccessful in establishing a mining operation, and abandoned his original claim in 1903. The claim reverted to
Crown land until the Longyear Drilling Company bought it in 1911. Longyear subsequently merged with other small mining companies in the area to form the basis of what would ultimately become
Falconbridge Ltd., although actual mining operations in the community did not begin until 1928, when
Thayer Lindsley purchased the company for $2,500,000 and finally sunk the Falconbridge deposit's first
mine shaft the following year. Falconbridge Ltd. built the Edison Building in 1969 to serve as its head office. Falconbridge Ltd. was taken over by
Swiss mining company
Xstrata in 2006. In 2007, Xstrata donated the Edison Building to the city to serve as the new home of the municipal
archives. Falconbridge was incorporated as a town in 1957. The town's first and only
reeve, John Franklin, served until the creation of Nickel Centre in 1973. A visual and radar
UFO incident occurred in the community on 11 November 1975, later reported in a press release by
NORAD. The object was tracked on radar from
CFS Falconbridge and sighted in binoculars, and estimated to be a 100-ft. diameter sphere with craters. Seven
OPP police officers also witnessed the UFO. Some explanations given for the sightings included
Venus, clouds, and/or
weather balloons.
Garson The community is named after the geographic township of Garson, named by the Ontario Government in the 1880s for
William Garson, who represented
Lincoln in the
Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1886 to 1890. The area was first developed in 1888 as a logging camp, by the Holland and Emery Lumber Company of
East Tawas, Michigan. In that year this firm constructed a
narrow gauge logging railway from Wahnapitae, establishing its main operations at Headquarters Lake, near the Garson townsite. Logs from this area were taken to the
Wanapitei River and
driven to
Lake Huron. Eventually this track was extended north into
Capreol Township. The
Canadian Northern Railway was built through Garson in 1908.
Garson Mine, which is now owned by
Vale Inco was first developed in 1911 by the
Mond Nickel Company. The defunct Kirkwood Mine was also located in Garson.
Skead Skead is located approximately 25 kilometres northeast of downtown Sudbury, and situated on south shore of
Lake Wanapitei. Home to over 600 year round residents, Skead was settled about 1921 as a
sawmill community, when the Spanish River Lumber Company relocated there from its original mill site, near the mouth of the
Spanish River. It was named by the firm's general manager W. J. Bell, in honour of his late
father-in-law, Canadian Senator
James Skead. Skead was a stop on the
Canadian Northern Railway line from
Capreol to
North Bay, which later became the
Canadian National Railway Alderdale Subdivision, but rail service declined in the mid-20th century and was eliminated altogether in 1996.
Boland's Bay Skead's address and telephone service also includes the smaller neighbourhood of '''Boland's Bay''' (), a dispersed rural community and unincorporated place, on the
eponymous bay at the southwestern tip of
Lake Wanapitei. The community was known as Bowlands Bay and the bay as Bowland Bay until 1975 when the present spellings were adopted. However, the old spelling continues on the local street Bowlands Bay Road. Boland's Bay (spelled Bowlands Bay in older timetables) was a
milepoint on the
Canadian Northern Railway line from
Capreol to
North Bay, which later became the
Canadian National Railway Alderdale Subdivision,
Wahnapitae The community of Wahnapitae is located east of Sudbury along Highway 17. Established as a logging community, it was the first settlement in Nickel Centre. The community takes its name from the
Wanapitei River, which flows through Wahnapitae, and whose name in turn comes from the
Ojibwe word
waanabidebiing, which means "concave-tooth [shaped] water" and describes the shape of
Lake Wanapitei. The correct spelling of the community's name should not be confused with the correct spelling for the water bodies. During early stages of the town's development, the river was used by multiple companies to send harvest logs to Southern Ontario for processing. After mining became more viable in the Sudbury District, logging operations in Wahnapitae were stopped, leaving the town as a residential community. ==Ghost town==