Swansea Island is one of seven which pepper Ramsey Lake, a popular feature of the city of Sudbury which boasts 93,000 residents.
It is not known precisely how the island gots its name, but Sudbury, the nickel capital of Canada, has strong historical links with the Welsh Swansea.
Its Murray Mine was owned by Henry Hussey Vivian, the eldest son of the famous Swansea family whose copper firm, Vivian and Sons, made the Welsh town the biggest smelting location in Britain.
HH Vivian and Co bought the mine - 3,082 acres a few miles west of Sudbury - in March 1890. His visit four years later, by which time the former MP had been knighted and enobled as the first Baron Swansea, was deemed such an honour for the small town that a report appeared on the front page of the Sudbury Journal on October 25, 1894, under the headline "A Distinguished Visitor".
However, the pomp and ceremony was short lived. Lord Swansea closed the operation down a few weeks later. The bottom had fallen out of the copper market and the ore from the Murray Mine contained large amounts of nickel which could not easily be separated at the time. To compound the problem the Vivian smelter did not seem to work very well. There was also talk of mismanagement by the Swansea company.
A month after his visit to the Canadian mine, Lord Swansea died within hours of returning to his Swansea home, Singleton Abbey.
While one link with Swansea was severed, another held fast. By 1886, Sam Richie and the Canadian Copper Company had established an operation at Copper Cliff, south west of Sudbury. A copper-nickel matt was produced, which was sent to Britain for final reduction to copper. One of its destinations was the Vivian copperworks in Swansea.
In 1902 Canadian Copper merged with other firms to form the International Nickel Company, today known as INCO.
Another reason for the naming of Swansea Island may lie in the links between the area and the Swansea Valley, to the north of the Welsh city.
In the 1880s British chemical products manufacturer Ludwig Mond discovered a way of separating out the nickel. He bought property at Coniston, east of Sudbury and on the north east edge of Ramsey Lake, in 1898, to provide a source of nickel-copper matte for his plant at Clydach in the Swansea Valley.
His company shipped the matt to Clydach until the 1920s. In 1929 Mond Nickel and INCO merged.
This article originally appeared in Planet Swansea which was published by the South Wales Evening Post.
It is not known precisely how the island gots its name, but Sudbury, the nickel capital of Canada, has strong historical links with the Welsh Swansea.
Its Murray Mine was owned by Henry Hussey Vivian, the eldest son of the famous Swansea family whose copper firm, Vivian and Sons, made the Welsh town the biggest smelting location in Britain.
HH Vivian and Co bought the mine - 3,082 acres a few miles west of Sudbury - in March 1890. His visit four years later, by which time the former MP had been knighted and enobled as the first Baron Swansea, was deemed such an honour for the small town that a report appeared on the front page of the Sudbury Journal on October 25, 1894, under the headline "A Distinguished Visitor".
However, the pomp and ceremony was short lived. Lord Swansea closed the operation down a few weeks later. The bottom had fallen out of the copper market and the ore from the Murray Mine contained large amounts of nickel which could not easily be separated at the time. To compound the problem the Vivian smelter did not seem to work very well. There was also talk of mismanagement by the Swansea company.
A month after his visit to the Canadian mine, Lord Swansea died within hours of returning to his Swansea home, Singleton Abbey.
While one link with Swansea was severed, another held fast. By 1886, Sam Richie and the Canadian Copper Company had established an operation at Copper Cliff, south west of Sudbury. A copper-nickel matt was produced, which was sent to Britain for final reduction to copper. One of its destinations was the Vivian copperworks in Swansea.
In 1902 Canadian Copper merged with other firms to form the International Nickel Company, today known as INCO.
Another reason for the naming of Swansea Island may lie in the links between the area and the Swansea Valley, to the north of the Welsh city.
In the 1880s British chemical products manufacturer Ludwig Mond discovered a way of separating out the nickel. He bought property at Coniston, east of Sudbury and on the north east edge of Ramsey Lake, in 1898, to provide a source of nickel-copper matte for his plant at Clydach in the Swansea Valley.
His company shipped the matt to Clydach until the 1920s. In 1929 Mond Nickel and INCO merged.
This article originally appeared in Planet Swansea which was published by the South Wales Evening Post.
Ramsay Lake which is home to Swansea Island.
