“Cobalt: The Making of a Mining Superpower”

Planet Haliburton

This week on Planet Haliburton, Charlie Angus, the NDP Member of Parliament for the current Federal Riding of Timmins, James Bay, which covers an area greater than a quarter of Ontario’s entire land mass is our guest.

In addition to that “day job”, the Honourable Member is a practicing musician – with the iconic band The Grievous Angels - and the author of 8, soon to be 9, books.

His 8th book entitled “Cobalt: The Making of a Mining Superpower”, is a fascinating look at the role his adopted home town of Cobalt, Ontario played in making Canada the world’s preeminent resource extraction superpower it is today.

This interview highlights some of the key themes in Cobalt including the outrageous power and excess of wealthy mine owners and related state-sponsored attempts to steal Indigenous Lands. At the same time, Angus foregrounds the amazing level of solidarity and resistance to corporate power and colonialism put up by Indigenous People, miners and the Union they built to defend themselves.

This is not the “Empire Ontario” history we were taught in school that's embedded in our national myths and the truths they hide.

This is the Real Deal.