Canada's poorest province gets its day

"I am inclined to regard this land as the one God gave to Cain," wrote French explorer Jacques Cartier in May 1534 when he first saw the coast of Labrador, now a part of the province called Newfoundland and Labrador.

Cartier's unflattering description seemed to have stuck - until recently. Once the poorest province in Canada, this vast, snow-covered, and heavily wooded area may see the country's fastest growth this year, with a projected 5.2 percent increase in gross domestic product, eclipsing even that of oil-rich Alberta.

While several new industrial and transportation developments have bolstered this once remote and icy region, the real engines behind its sudden growth are China's booming economy and the resulting global thirst for industrial commodities like oil and nickel. Last November saw the openings of a new oil field off the coast of Newfoundland and a giant nickel project in Labrador - the province's largest mineral excavation effort in 60 years. The industrial windfall is exciting economists and locals alike.

"This is the best thing that has happened to me," says Sybella Daniels, an Inuit, from her home in Goose Bay. "It has allowed me to buy a house, something I never thought I would have done. Before the mine all we had was seasonal work here." Ms. Daniels has worked at the site since 2002 and earns $38,500 a year driving a giant Caterpillar truck moving ore.

Voisey's Bay, which sits on the isolated Labrador coast about 220 miles north of Goose Bay, is one of the largest nickel deposits in the world. The Canadian-based global minerals giant Inco Ltd. started processing and shipping nickel concentrate from the open-pit mine for the first time last November.

"Voisey's Bay is the first major nickel development to come on stream globally in several years. It couldn't have come into production at a better time for Inco and for the nickel market," says Scott Hand, chairman and chief executive of International Nickel, from his head office in Toronto.

During talks in the 1990s to develop the site, the price of nickel was consistently below $2 a pound on the London Metal Exchange. These days, nickel costs around $6.70, just off its high.

"With growing demand for nickel, particularly from China ... we believe nickel demand growth will remain strong for the foreseeable future," says Mr. Hand.

As part of its arrangement with two native groups, the Inuit and the Innu, Inco had to promise to hire local aboriginal people. The work force of about 400 is half local natives - the highest percentage of aboriginal workers of any new project in Canada.

Since there is no permanent settlement at Voisey's Bay, Daniels and other workers are flown in and out every two weeks and live in a camp on site.

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