Tárogató, 1950 (13. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)
1950-10-01 / 4. szám
16 TÁROGATÓ 1883, during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the world famous nickel ores of the Sudbury district were discovered. The early history of the nickel industry in Canada is mainly that of the Canadian Copper Company which was incorporated in 1886 and which after 1902 became a subsidiary of the International Nickel Company. In 1900 a British company, the Mond Nickel Company Limited, was incorporated. It operated until 1928 when it was merged with the International Nickel Company. The Falconbridge nickel deposits in the Sudbury district were discovered in 1916, but production was not begun there until 1930. The smelter matte from these deposits was shipped to Kristiansund, Norway for refining. When the Germans overran Norway, this refinery fell into their hands, but in mid-1945 it again came into the company’s possession. Canadian mines furnish the largest quantitiy of the world’s production of nickel. In 1898, Canadian production was recorded at 5,518,000 pounds. Then years later it had reached a figure of 19,-143.000 pounds while by 1918 the production had soared to 92,507,000. The post-war period saw a drop in production, but adoption of the metal to more peace-time uses once more stimulated its exploitation. Production fell off during the depression but the Second World War once more gave the use of the metal a boost. The record year was 1943, when Canadian mines produced 288.019.000 pounds of the metal. The production of nickel in Canada during 1949 is estimated to be 256,657,- 000 pounds. ODYSSEY’S END IN SIGHT FOR POLES IN MIDDLE EAST The International Refugee Organization has announced that the most dramatic Odyssey in modern history has neared its end when an IRO ship sailed this month from the Kenya seaport of Mombassa, East Africa loaded with Polish refugees bound for re-settlement in England. The story began eleven years ago when approximately six million Poles, whose country was invaded from east and west at the start of the second World War, were scattered all over the world. The last chapter will end during the next months, when the last group of the 1,285 Poles still left in East Africa arrives in England. Of the original 6,000,000 the Nazis alone accounted for more than 4,000,000 in their slave labour and prisoner-of-war camps. The USSR took prisoner some 350,000 Polish soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of civilians were forcibly removed or otherwise evacuated to inner and Asiatic Russia. Following an agreement between the Soviet Union and the Polish government in exile, great numbers were released from internment camps and were permitted to join the newly-formed Polish army in Iran. Almost 38,000 civilians found their way along the shores of the Caspian into Iran, and from there to India, Lebanon, Palestine and East Africa. Today, these Polish refugee colonies of the Middle East and Africa have practically vanished through the joint resettlement effort of the British government and the IRO. In 1947, when IRO took over the wardisplaced from the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, there were still some 27,000 Polish DPs in the Middle East and Africa. Many already had returned to Poland. The Jewish members of the colonies had moved into Palestine. Others, through the aid of the British government found new homes in the United Kingdom and throughout the Commonwealth. Repatriation was no answer for most of those who remained, since they disapproved of the new regime in Poland. Since the start of IRO’s activities, only about 3,000 Poles have chosen to return to their native land from the Middle East. Almost 18,000 others have been re-settled — chiefly in Canada, Great Britain and Australia. Recently, the British Government decided to take over the responsibility for the remaining group of some 700 Poles in the Lebanon. The majority of them sailed last month from Beirut to England.
