Quote:
Originally Posted by flatlander
I didn't think it was so much a permafrost issue as the fact that its built on a rock. It is quite interesting to see.
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Yeah, Flin Flon is basically like the moon, but with a few trees. The pictures I've seen remind me a LOT of Sudbury back when Inco had pretty much no pollution controls. (It's taken decades to recover. Driving by Sudbury in the early 90s was interesting, to say the least - the trees just got shorter and shorter as you approached town, until they were barely a foot high.)
Flin Flon is more of a "natural" moonscape, and actually has some big trees, but either way - the town is built up on solid granite bedrock. You don't run sewer lines through that, unless you're VERY rich. Permafrost, incidentally, is not an issue with granite - although there may be parts of town that have enough actual soil that this could become a concern, I doubt Flin Flon is anywhere near north enough to have much permafrost. It's about the same latitude as Edmonton, and gets similar temperatures throughout the year.
The vignette in question, or at least the one I remember, described how the town was named after one Flintabbatey Flonatin (bet I spelled that wrong!), a character in an old science fiction novel. It's one of a very few places named after a science fiction character.
In terms of moving there, I hope you enjoy small town life. It's one hell of a trip to any city. Beautiful area, though. As for cellphone coverage, there's service in town, but not GSM (Rogers), and service on the highway up is practically nonexistent. MTS's site is buggered so I can't confirm for sure, but it is remote enough that it's worth doing your homework on.