Getting Resources Out: Location, Accessibility and Extraction

Hook: a mine you can only drive to in winter

Some mines in Canada's North can only be reached by truck for a few weeks each year, on winter roads built across frozen lakes and wetlands. The rest of the year, people and supplies fly in. Why would a company go to all that trouble? And why do other resources, like gravel, come from pits right beside the city?

The answer has to do with location, accessibility and value.

What makes a resource accessible?

Accessibility is how easy it is to reach a resource and get it to market. It depends on:

• Distance to cities, ports and processing plants.
• Transportation: highways, railways, pipelines, ports, winter roads, airstrips.
• Terrain and climate: mountains, muskeg (wetland), permafrost, long cold winters.
• Depth and form: Is the ore near the surface or 2 km down? Is the oil liquid or thick bitumen?
• Technology and cost: new methods can make a resource worth developing.
• Price and value: a high price can make a remote resource worth reaching.
• Permission: governments must issue permits, and Indigenous nations must be consulted (and, increasingly, give consent) when their rights could be affected.

A key Grade 9 idea is value-to-weight. Diamonds and gold are worth so much per kilogram that a mine can pay for flying in workers and supplies. Gravel and sand are cheap and heavy, so pits must be close to where they are used.

How Canadians extract and harvest resources

Mining

• Open-pit mining for large ore bodies near the surface (for example, many copper and gold mines). Huge trucks haul rock out of a pit dug in steps called benches.
• Underground mining for deep or narrow ore. A vertical shaft with a headframe on top lowers workers and machines; tunnels lead to the ore. The Sudbury area has some of the deepest mines in North America.
• Placer mining for gold in loose gravel in streams, as in the Klondike region of Yukon.
• Solution mining for some potash in Saskatchewan: water is pumped down to dissolve the potash, and the salty solution is pumped up and dried.

Oil and gas

• Conventional wells pump oil and gas that flow through rock.
• Hydraulic fracturing ('fracking') pumps water, sand and chemicals at high pressure to crack tight rock so gas or oil can flow, as in parts of Alberta and northeastern British Columbia.
• Oil sands: bitumen near the surface is dug up in surface mines north of Fort McMurray; most bitumen is too deep and is recovered in situ, usually by steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD).
• Offshore platforms drill under the sea off Newfoundland and Labrador.

Forestry

• Clear-cutting removes all trees in a block; it is widely used in the boreal forest, where many tree species naturally regrow after large disturbances like fire. Areas are then replanted or left to regrow.
• Selective cutting removes only some trees (often used in hardwood forests of central and southern Ontario, such as sugar maple stands).
• Shelterwood cutting removes trees in stages so that young trees grow under the shelter of older ones.

Fishing

• Trawling drags a net through the water or along the sea floor; longlines and gillnets catch fish such as halibut and salmon; traps catch lobster and crab.
• Aquaculture raises salmon in net pens (in British Columbia and New Brunswick, for example; the federal government has said open-net pens in B.C. coastal waters must be phased out by mid-2029) and mussels and oysters in Prince Edward Island and elsewhere.

Location, method and use are connected

These factors work together (interrelationships):

• A remote deposit may need a fly-in, fly-out workforce, its own power plant, and winter roads. That raises costs, so only rich deposits are developed.
• The method affects the environment: open pits and oil sands mines disturb large areas and create tailings; in situ methods disturb less surface but need energy and water for steam.
• The use of the resource affects where processing happens: bulky ore is often concentrated near the mine to reduce weight before shipping; lumber is sawn near the forest.

Innovative approaches to responsible development

• Progressive reclamation: restoring land in stages while a mine is still running. Ontario's Mining Act requires mines to file closure plans and provide financial assurance (money set aside) for cleanup.
• Electric mining equipment: the Borden gold mine near Chapleau, Ontario, was developed as an underground mine using battery-electric vehicles, reducing diesel fumes for workers and emissions.
• Water recycling in oil sands operations, and research into treating tailings faster.
• Partnerships with Indigenous nations, including agreements on jobs, training, environmental monitoring and shared revenue.
• Remote sensing and drones to find deposits with less ground disturbance and to monitor forest regrowth.