A City Built on Nickel
Sudbury is situated on the Canadian Shield in the Great Lakes Basin and is composed of a rich mix of urban, suburban, rural and wilderness environments. Travellers will be hard-pressed to find anything that matches Sudbury's unique combination of natural and created wonders. In the midst of the beautiful Canadian Shield landscape, the city lies in a vast geological basin that yields up a wealth of precious metals - gold, silver, cobalt, platinum and nickel. In fact, Sudbury has the largest-known concentration of nickel in the world.
One reminder of the importance nickel has played in Sudbury's development in its most famous landmark - an impressive 9 m (30 foot) high replica of a 1951 Canadian 5 cents nickel. The Big Nickel Replica is 24 inches thick and mounted on a base 12 ft. by 12 ft.and 5 ft. thick. You can get deeper into nickel by travelling 20 m down the Big Nickel Mine shaft to the only authentic hard-rock mine in Ontario that's open to visitors.
